by Kathleen Killick
Ask a Year 5 student whether recess should be longer and you'll get an instant, excited answer. Ask them to write it down and something more interesting happens. Now they have to pick their strongest reason. They have to think about what the teacher on duty might say back. They have to find the words that will actually change someone's mind.
That's not just writing. That's critical and creative thinking in action.
It's also exactly the kind of work that's easiest to hand over to AI. Type in "write a persuasive piece arguing for a longer recess" and you'll have a response in seconds. The student gets a finished product but skips every decision that would have made them a better thinker.
As Federal Education Minister Jason Clare recently told The Educator, when students use AI to do their thinking for them, "That's not learning."
Writing is thinking made visible
We often talk about writing as a literacy skill. It's really a thinking skill that happens to show up on paper.
Every type of writing asks something different of a student's brain. A narrative asks them to imagine characters a reader will care about and a plot that makes them want to keep reading. A persuasive text asks them to decide what they believe and how to convince someone else they're right. An information report asks them to sort what matters from what doesn't and explain it clearly. Each of these is an act of critical and creative thinking.
The hard parts are where the learning happens. Brainstorming ten ideas and coming up with the one nobody else thought of. Crafting a Sizzling Start that hooks the reader from the first line. Building tension that keeps the reader on the edge of their seat. Cutting the boring bits so every sentence earns its place. Working through each of these steps is where the learning happens, and it's exactly the part that students skip when they use AI to do the thinking for them.
There's another catch. AI works by predicting the most likely next word, so it's built for the average. Ask it for 25 stories about a school camp and you'll get 25 that sound very similar. Ask 25 students who've been taught to come up with their own ideas and you might get a camp run by aliens, the night every tent blew into the lake and a story told by the camp cook's wooden spoon. Original thinking is one thing AI can't supply.
This is why the primary years matter so much. In a recent survey of nearly 3,400 NSW teachers, fewer than one in ten primary teachers said their students use AI for schoolwork. That gives us a short window to build students' thinking before AI becomes part of everyday life. A student who has learnt to think and write well will use AI to support their ideas rather than just accepting whatever it gives them.
Feedback is a conversation, not a transaction
If writing is thinking, feedback is where that thinking gets sharpened. That's why it matters who gives it.
There's a growing trend for students to type their writing into an AI tool and get feedback straight back from it. It sounds efficient. On its own, though, it can miss the point of why we write.
Writing is communication. Students write to make someone laugh, change someone's mind or share something that matters to them. When a machine is the only reader, the writing can lose its purpose and start to feel soulless.
Good feedback comes from someone who knows the student. A teacher knows when a student has finally used dialogue after weeks of trying, or when a quiet student has argued for something for the first time. A teacher can sit beside a student, ask "What did you mean here?" and help them find the answer themselves. That relationship is what turns a reluctant writer into a confident one.
Where AI belongs: giving teachers time back
None of this means AI has no place in the writing classroom. It does. The point is, it works best alongside the teacher, not in place of them.
The real barrier to great feedback is time. In a recent survey of 164 educators, around six in ten said it takes them at least 15 minutes to assess one piece of writing. Nearly half said 15 to 30 minutes.
For a class of 25, that's somewhere between six and 12 hours of marking for a single writing task. By the time students get their work back, the moment to learn from it has passed. It's hard to act on feedback on something you wrote weeks ago. That matters, because what students do with the feedback is the most important part of the process.
That gap between writing and feedback is where AI can genuinely help, if it's built the right way.
The team at Seven Steps to Writing Success partnered with AI assessment specialists Mark My Words to build a tool around that idea. Their AI-powered assessment tool is designed for teachers, not students. Teachers upload students' writing, typed or handwritten, and the tool does the time-consuming first pass. Teachers can then see where each student and the whole class are at.
Critically, the teacher stays in charge. They read the work, check the results and decide what feedback each student needs. Rather than students getting feedback straight from the AI, it comes to them through their teacher.
"There's no evidence that AI can replace what happens between a teacher and their students," Kathleen Killick, CEO of Seven Steps to Writing Success, told The Educator. "Right now, its real value is taking on the slow, repetitive part of marking, so teachers can spend their time on the parts that actually change a student's writing: the conversation, the teaching, helping students act on the feedback."
Susan Sim, Learning Leader and Teacher at Shepparton Christian College, describes the AI feedback as "a good springboard for teachers to build upon, enabling us to personalise comments and highlight specific areas for improvement in each student's writing."
What changes most is the timing. When teachers have results in days rather than weeks, students get feedback while the writing is still fresh. Their next draft or writing task becomes a chance to try a stronger opening or build more tension, rather than another attempt that earns the same result. Teachers have time to sit with students one-on-one, set individual writing goals and check whether those goals are being met.
It also changes how teachers plan. Seeing patterns across the whole class shows them what needs to be taught next, whether that's brainstorming better ideas, using persuasive devices or crafting a satisfying ending. Because the tool is built on an established writing approach, it addresses those gaps by linking to targeted training and resources. Gaye Franklin, Deputy Head of Primary at Flinders Christian Community College, said her teachers "love so much of it, from the actual marking of the writing to the reporting to looking at what the class as a whole needs and being able to access the right Seven Steps lesson straight away."
Getting the balance right
Schools need to think carefully about how AI should be used to support not undermine student learning. For writing (and really all subjects), here's one simple test: who’s doing the thinking?
If AI is doing the thinking for students, something has gone wrong. If AI is freeing up teachers to spend more time helping students think, it's doing exactly what it should.
That Year 5 student arguing for a longer recess doesn't need AI to fight that battle for them. They need time to think it through and a teacher with the time to help them improve their thinking. Used well, AI can help make room for both.