Somerset Times | Term Three, 2026

Artificial intelligence can produce a scientific explanation in seconds. It can summarise research, analyse information and present an answer that sounds confident and convincing. The challenge is that a convincing answer is not always a correct one.

A recent Australian report by Learning First, drawing on responses from nearly 3,400 teachers and more than 750 school leaders, highlights the impact AI is already having on student learning and assessment. The report warns of cognitive outsourcing, where students hand the thinking itself over to AI and bypass the productive effort required for genuine learning. It also draws attention to the “mirage of false mastery”, where a polished piece of work may create the appearance of understanding without providing trustworthy evidence of what the student knows and can do.

This is where Science education is becoming more important than ever. Learning scientific knowledge remains essential, but what happens in a Science classroom is about much more than remembering the parts of a plant. It teaches students how to ask worthwhile questions, analyse data, recognise patterns and evaluate the quality of evidence. Students learn to consider alternative explanations and decide whether a conclusion is genuinely supported by the information available.

These skills have always mattered and extend well beyond the science classroom. In a world where students can access an immediate and convincing answer to almost any question, they need the knowledge and confidence to pause, question it and decide whether it can be trusted.

Headmaster Chris Ivey recently spoke about the importance of helping students embrace AI in their learning without allowing it to do the work for them. Within Science at Somerset, we are considering what this looks like in practice.

We do not want to ignore AI or simply tell students not to use it. It is already part of the world in which they are being educated, and it will almost certainly be part of their future workplaces. Our students need to learn how to use AI effectively and responsibly. At the same time, they need enough scientific knowledge to recognise when an AI response is inaccurate, incomplete or unsupported.

We also need to protect the opportunities students have to develop their own critical thinking. When a polished answer is always available at their fingertips, it can be tempting to skip the difficult thinking that leads to genuine understanding.

This year, our Year 10 science students have been completing Critical AI Prompt Engineering lessons. These lessons have two connected aims. The first is to show students how the quality and specificity of a prompt affects the responses produced by AI. Students compare different prompts and evaluate how factors, such as scientific detail, intended audience and required format, influence the accuracy and effectiveness of the explanation they receive. They then use what they have learned to construct a purposeful scientific prompt of their own.

The second, and more important aim, is to teach students that generating a response is not the end of the process. Once AI has produced an explanation, students critically analyse it. They look for scientific misconceptions, missing information, unsupported claims and language that sounds impressive but does not actually explain the science. Through this process, students learn that a well-written response is not necessarily an accurate one.

Prompting is only one part of the process. Asking AI a better question may improve its response, but it does not remove the student’s responsibility to check the answer. We want students to ask: Is this scientifically accurate? What evidence supports it? Has anything important been left out? Could this explanation create a misconception? Most importantly, do I understand the science well enough to make that judgement?

The same Year 10 cohort is also completing its Research Investigation through a safe exam browser. This controlled environment restricts access to generative AI while students complete the task in class. It gives them the opportunity to analyse evidence, develop an argument and communicate their own scientific reasoning without an AI tool generating the response for them.

Protecting assessment integrity should not mean abandoning rich tasks such as research investigations. Our challenge is to preserve these valuable learning experiences while also gathering trustworthy evidence of what each student knows and can do.

These approaches are intended to work together. At some points, students are taught how to use AI carefully, purposefully and critically. At others, they work without it and demonstrate what they can do independently. Students need experience with both. They need to understand when AI can support their learning, but they also need the confidence and ability to think without it.

Year 10 was deliberately selected for this approach because the assessment is completed and graded internally, with common conditions across the Somerset cohort. This allows us to strengthen students’ research, analysis and scientific writing before they enter the senior years, without affecting externally comparable results or their future pathways.

Although Year 10 was chosen for the controlled assessment approach, our response to AI is not limited to restricting its use. Recent research from Learning First argues that discussions about AI in education must consider who is using it, for what purpose and in which educational context. This has guided the different approaches we have taken across year levels.

On the Student Free Day, all Somerset staff attended an AI conference where Professor Kai Riemer discussed the potential value of using AI as a feedback tool when it is guided by a carefully constructed prompt. Following this, Year 12 Physics students were provided with a pre-constructed prompt to help them self-assess their completed Research Investigation draft before final submission.

The prompt was deliberately designed to keep the student responsible for the thinking. It could not write or rewrite any part of the report. Instead, it asked students to reconsider their reasoning, identify areas requiring further attention and check whether they had addressed the assessment criteria. Students then had to decide for themselves whether a change was needed and how that change should be made.

This approach also responds to the concern raised by Learning First about “cognitive outsourcing”, where students hand the thinking itself over to AI. The prompt was most useful for students who had already completed a thoughtful draft. It could help them identify gaps and question their decisions, but it could not replace the research, scientific understanding or effort required to produce the report.

We cannot know which technologies will have the greatest impact, or what careers will exist, when our younger students leave school. What we can do is make careful decisions about when AI may support learning and when students need to work without it. New technologies will continue to produce exciting claims about what might soon be possible. Our aim is for students to leave Somerset science able to approach those claims with interest, while still asking for the evidence.

At our Founders’ Day service last week, I shared with those present that I love politics! Irrespective of the party, I enjoy learning about how and why people in positions of leadership do what they do. So, when I had the chance to watch the musical, “Hamilton”, I was intrigued by the concept of what these people tried to do in starting a new nation 250 years ago.

There’s a theme running through the musical and it comes from the protagonist, Alexander Hamiltion. He is often asking or being accused of being obsessed with his legacy. I read a wonderful quote just recently which puts legacy into action. A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they know they shall never sit.”

Part of the problem is that when we think of Legacies we sometimes think of impact through career or money. However, I believe our legacy is more about what we’ve done to impact others. It’s about the lives we have or will touch along the way. As we celebrated Founders’ Day, we can look to those who were there in 1983 and then look to those who continued to have influence on this incredible place, and understand their legacy. Each of them has had an impact on who we are today.

At Founders’ Day we honour people who gave of themselves for something greater than themselves.

Ordinary people who in the early 1980s, decided to do something extraordinary, they were going to create something that possibly none of them would have imagined would be the size, scope or quality of what it is today? And to those who followed our founders, they continued to contribute to this place in ways that we often don’t realise.

So, my challenge to the Somerset community is pretty simple, particularly to our staff and senior students.

What sort of legacy do we want to leave during our lives? It’s worth asking ourselves as we celebrated the legacy of our former Chair, My Tony Hickey OAM. Our legacy won’t be in status, but in the way we treat people. It won’t be in our networks, but in how we seek to make a difference to all, not just those around us. It won’t be our wealth, but what we do with that wealth to support others.

Sometimes, it’s hard to figure out how we do this. As a Christian, I think God gives each of us a desire to serve. In a book of the Bible called Galatians, there are some helpful hints on how we might build our legacy and I’ve summarised them here.

Don’t put yourself first. A legacy that matters, as we celebrate today, can only happen when we put others first.
Stay true to who you are. We are all very different, with different gifts and talents, so use what you’ve got to build into those around you and don’t think you have to be like the other person. This place is built on different people, at different times, with different gifts and each has played an incredible part.
Share what you have. Your time, your gifts, your wisdom.
And don’t get tired of doing it…a legacy needs commitment.
As I think of legacy, I think of the earlier quote, A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they know they shall never sit.” Our Founders and those who followed wanted to do something that would benefit others. But as they have done, we don’t just need to talk about it, we need to be intentional.

So, as we give thanks for our Founders and those who have served this community right through from 1983 to today, we give thanks for those who continue to serve, who continue to enrich this place. It’s my role as the current Headmaster to remind us all of what has gone before and to ask us all to consider what we will do for our own legacy. Let’s challenge ourselves on what we want our legacy to be acknowledging we’re never too young or too old to reflect on this.