‘I don’t have to go to school anymore,” said my Year 8 son during one of our regular conversations about why school matters. “ChatGPT has a Study and Learn option now.” Why sit in a classroom when AI can explain lessons and deliver answers instantly? The only reason he still attends school, he added, is to see his friends.
It might sound like adolescent bravado but my son’s remark captures a broader truth: young people are increasingly questioning the value of formal education. They compare the immediacy and variety of on-demand knowledge (including quick AI-generated answers) with the rigidity of school curricula. For many, these sources feel faster, clearer and more relevant than the slow pace and fixed structure of the classroom.
Many critics interpret this attitude as evidence of a broader educational crisis, with AI at least partly to blame for student disengagement. For example, when the NSW education department banned ChatGPT and similar tools in public schools in early 2023, it warned that AI could allow “fluent but lazy” thinking to go unchallenged and devalue authentic student learning.
Reinforcing this concern, the Paul Ramsay Foundation–sponsored report Shaping AI and EdTech to Tackle Australia’s Learning Divide argues that introducing AI tools without the right frameworks risks alienating students. If new digital tools widen the gap between how students learn and how school teaches, those students may feel increasingly disconnected from, and question the relevance of, school itself. The report’s author, Leslie Loble, stresses that without strong governance and thoughtful design, the tools will push students further away from learning rather than bringing them closer.
It’s important to remember, though, that students were questioning the relevance of their schooling long before AI came onto the scene. Research across Australia consistently shows that student engagement and sense of belonging have been in steady decline. Between 2003 and 2015, data from the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment, or PISA, revealed that the share of Australian fifteen-year-olds who agreed they “feel like they belong at school” fell from 88 to 72 per cent, almost double the average decline across OECD countries.
Over the same period, the proportion who reported feeling disconnected from school also rose sharply, particularly in the middle years of high school (around Year 9, when disengagement peaks). Those least likely to feel a sense of belonging included Indigenous students, girls, students from less well-off backgrounds, Australian-born students and those in provincial and remote areas.
International data backs this up. The PISA studies have identified key predictors of student disengagement, including a low perceived value of school, poor classroom climate and weak teacher–student relationships. When school feels unsafe or irrelevant, or when students don’t have positive relationships with teachers, they inevitably tune out. Lessons are too often framed as preparation for the next exam rather than opportunities to explore and apply knowledge in authentic ways.
Many students also feel they have little voice in what or how they learn; their role is to receive and reproduce information, not to shape the learning process. It’s no wonder so many struggles to see a meaningful connection between what they do in class and the realities of their future lives.
We can’t simply blame individual teachers for these outcomes. Staff in Australian schools report some of the highest workloads in the OECD. Many work well beyond their contracted hours just to keep up with administrative demands, constant curriculum changes and pastoral care responsibilities. A 2022 Grattan Institute survey found that teachers work about fifty-five hours a week on average — far above a standard working week — yet less than half of that time is spent teaching or interacting with students. The rest is devoured by paperwork, meetings, data entry and other tasks. Disengagement is the product of a system that prioritises compliance, standardisation and measurable targets over curiosity, relationships and real-world relevance.
In this light, my son’s comment starts to make sense. When students feel disconnected from what happens in the classroom and see little link between schoolwork and their own goals, it’s hardly surprising they turn to AI. By the time they finish school, many have learned to see education as something to endure rather than a space to explore and grow. My son was voicing what many students feel: that the education system is struggling to keep pace with the way they learn and live.
The first step to reducing students’ overreliance on AI is to make learning more relevant and engaging. Too often, lessons are framed as preparation for the next test or assignment rather than opportunities to grapple with real-world challenges. When students are asked to solve problems that connect with their lives, from environmental issues to ethical dilemmas to practical applications of maths and science, their learning feels purposeful.
This could mean project-based work, with students collaborating to design ways of reducing waste in their school, designing a more inclusive public space, or creating campaigns around health and wellbeing. In classrooms, it could mean shifting discussions beyond textbook answers into debates that evaluate competing perspectives, with students weighing evidence, challenging assumptions, and justifying their reasoning.
Students would be given more opportunities for inquiry and more choice in how they demonstrate their learning, whether that’s through a presentation, a group project, or a community partnership. Lessons would become spaces of exploration, helping students see that what they are learning has a direct bearing on the futures they are preparing for.
Australian research supports this approach. A UniSA study earlier this year asked disengaged senior students to design and build a playground for a low-income school, combining inquiry, service and skills-based learning with teachers acting as facilitators. Students set achievable goals, conducted market research to identify community needs, and explored multiple design options before selecting the most viable. The researchers found that disengaged students are more likely to participate when learning connects to the real world, benefits their communities, and gives them opportunities to make authentic decisions.
A South Australian trial of project-based mathematics reached a similar conclusion. It found that students in project-based classes reported greater enjoyment, stronger academic confidence, and higher achievement than those in traditional classrooms. The approach was open-ended and inquiry-driven, with teachers facilitating group projects rather than delivering content. Unlike textbook-driven lessons, the projects began with a problem and introduced the maths needed to solve it.
If students see how their studies link directly to real-world issues and their futures, they are less likely to view AI as a shortcut and more likely to use it constructively, not to replace their learning, but to extend and deepen it.
The pressure is not only on students. Increasingly, educators themselves turn to AI to prepare course content, streamline administration or even generate assessment tasks. While this reliance is understandable in a system where staff are expected to do more with less, it risks hollowing out the very heart of education: the transfer of expertise, judgement and experience from educator to learner. Students notice this too, and they rightly ask, if their lecturers are leaning on AI, why shouldn’t they? When both sides are outsourcing parts of the learning process, the human connection at the core of education is put at risk.
Until we make those changes, AI will remain less an opportunistic shortcut than a necessary crutch. We need to be talking not about how AI is ruining education but about why our educational infrastructure is so brittle that a chatbot could exploit its weaknesses overnight. Only by tackling those underlying faultlines, the relevance of our curriculum, the way we measure success, the support we give both learners and teachers, can we ensure that the next technological disruption becomes a tool for empowerment rather than an escape hatch from a broken status quo.
AI didn’t create the cracks in our education system. It’s just accelerating and illuminating them. The responsibility is now on educators, policymakers, parents and communities to build an education system that reflects our highest aspirations for learning, one where technology complements genuine engagement rather than substituting for it. Only then will students choose substance over shortcuts — because the learning experience will finally be worth their while. •
