What to do if your child is accused of using AI on schoolwork

The message from school is short: the teacher thinks your child used AI on an assignment. Maybe your child says they didn’t. Maybe they admit it in tears. Either way, your stomach drops.

Take a breath. Ontario policy expects schools to weigh your child’s grade, maturity and whether it has happened before, so this is the start of a conversation, not the end of one. How you handle the next few days matters. Here’s a calm plan.

First, what Ontario policy says

Ontario’s assessment policy, Growing Success, says students must understand that work they hand in to be marked has to be their own. It asks each school board to write its own policy on preventing cheating, spotting it and responding to it.

That policy can’t be one-size-fits-all. Responses have to take into account at least four things:

1. your child’s grade,
2. their maturity,
3. whether it has happened before, and how often,
4. their individual circumstances.

So the school is expected to treat a 10-year-old’s first mistake differently from a pattern in Grade 8. Your board’s policy has the details; ask the school for it.

Talk to your child before you talk to the school

Start at home, somewhere calm, with open questions. You want the story, not a confession.

• “Tell me how you did this assignment, from the start.”
• “Did you use any app or website? Which one, and for what?”
• “Can you show me how you got this answer?”

Listen for the difference between “I asked it what the question meant” and “I copied what it wrote”. Both use AI. Only one skips the learning.

If your child is upset, say it plainly: “I’m on your side. Whatever happened, we’ll sort it out together.”

Then ask the teacher what they saw

Ask for a short meeting or call. Go in curious, not defensive. Useful questions:

• What made you think AI was used? A method we haven’t seen in class? Writing that doesn’t sound like my child? A detector?
• Was this practice or marked work?
• What was the rule for this assignment? Were any tools allowed?
• What happens next, and what does the board’s policy say?

Sometimes the concern is narrower than it first sounded: one paragraph, or two questions on a worksheet.

If your child did use AI

Own it, briefly, and turn to the learning. What matters most now is showing that your child can do the work.

• Offer to show the learning. Your child can redo the task, or explain it to the teacher, or do a similar question in class.
• Agree on a rule for next time, and tell the teacher what it is. Our post on whether using AI for homework is cheating has a simple set of family rules.
• Keep it in proportion. It’s a lesson about honesty. It doesn’t define your child.

If your child didn’t use AI

Stay calm and bring evidence of the thinking:

• Rough work. In math, the scrap paper, crossed-out tries and margin sums are strong evidence. Keep them for a while.
• Drafts and history. For writing, earlier versions or the document’s edit history show the work growing over time.
• A live demonstration. The best proof is your child doing a similar question, or explaining their answer, in front of the teacher. Suggest it yourself.

If an AI detector was the main reason, ask what else supports it. These tools guess, and they can be wrong. In one 2023 study, seven popular AI detectors flagged more than half of a set of essays by non-native English writers as AI-written. Essays by US Grade 8 students were judged almost perfectly. If your child is learning English, that’s worth raising, politely.

If you still disagree after talking with the teacher, ask to speak with the principal, and ask for the board’s policy in writing.

In math, keep the method visible

Math is a little different from writing. Work is easiest to recognise as your child’s when it uses the methods the class has learned: a number line, an array, an area model. A page with only answers, or a method the class hasn’t met yet, is more likely to raise questions.

Two habits help:

• Show the steps, in the class’s method, even when your child can do it in their head.
• If you or an app showed a different method, say so in a one-line note to the teacher. It turns a possible accusation into a useful conversation.

Preventing the next one

• Agree on “hints, not answers” for every helper: parents, older siblings and apps.
• Try first, then ask for help.
• Keep rough work until the unit is marked.
• When a tool helped, tell the teacher.

Where Astuzo fits in

We built Astuzo so the work stays your child’s. Your child snaps a photo of their math homework, and Spark, our friendly robot tutor, helps one step at a time with hints and questions, using methods Ontario classrooms use. Spark never just gives the answer. Your child does the math and writes it down, in their own handwriting.

It’s made for Grades 1 to 8 and the Ontario math curriculum. There are no ads, nothing is sold to your child, and homework photos are read and never stored. You get a short email each evening your child uses it, so you know what they worked on.

Astuzo is available on Android in Canada: get it on Google Play. On iPhone or iPad? Join the waitlist to hear when it’s on the App Store. Or start with our plain-language guides to the Ontario math curriculum.

Policy from Growing Success: Assessment, Evaluation, and Reporting in Ontario Schools (2010), pages 42–43. Detector study: Liang and others, “GPT detectors are biased against non-native English writers”, Patterns, 2023. Your child’s board policy and teacher have the final word.