Education AI Conference

Dr RAHMAN (Fong Lim): Madam Speaker, on 30 April it was my pleasure to deputise for the minister for Education in my capacity as the assistant minister to speak at the Artificial Intelligence in Education Conference. It was the first time we have had something like that in the Northern Territory, and it could not have been more timely or important for us to start talking about how to wrap our heads around AI encroaching on everyday classroom teaching. 

A range of people attended—not as many as I would have liked to have seen, truth be told—including significant people from our public schools, private school sector, independent schools and religious institutions. We had people from Larrakeyah Primary, Mother Teresa Catholic Primary, the School of Distance Education, Haileybury and CDU. 

It was an important opportunity to discuss how we will improve educational outcomes in the Northern Territory by harnessing AI tools rather than staying in denial about them. I preface my remarks by saying that I have previously spoken about the importance of leaning in, rather than being in denial about all things AI related. A 2025 global study on trust in AI and attitudes towards it found that Australia was basically the place that was most worried and least excited about it—that is, we are risk-averse and worried about all sorts of things going wrong and not leaning in to try to utilise these technologies in a purposeful way. 

Before speaking in some depth about what was said the other day, I draw out Larrakeyah Primary School as a fantastic primary school that took the initiative, under Principal Fathma Mauger and Assistant Principal Danni Mattiazzo, to create something it calls ‘IntelliLearn’. The Member for Port Darwin, who is the local member, also referenced this in a speech recently. The school took an LLM, paid money to put a skin around it and gave it some parameters. It is being used for kids in Year 5 to help them write better and improve their vocabulary. 

Kids are doing creative writing tasks within guardrails with AI technologies which are helping them make choices to improve sentence structure and describe things better, in essence, improving their written work. 

The conference was a fantastic opportunity for educators to get together and learn what is happening in this space. Toddle representative Melissa O’Shea was there. Toddle is one of the workflow engines being used to try to utilise AI in teaching spaces and improve workflow, particularly where there are capacity deficits in teaching and/or change management or transitions are happening within school systems. That sounds familiar, given what we will experience in the Northern Territory. My old school, Sanderson High, was a middle school and is now back to being a high school. The Member for Nightcliff may be interested, with Nightcliff Middle soon becoming Nightcliff High and Dripstone too. These schools will need help to make smart transitions to ensure they are full-service full-suite schools providing educational offerings and outcomes for all their students. 

On the other end of the spectrum, Andrew McGregor from Haileybury spoke on a panel of principals about what his school is doing to try to improve educational outcomes by utilising AI technologies. Haileybury is trying to do innovative work, and it is probably making a difference, as you can see reflected in its VCE results. I congratulate Haileybury for being forward thinking, unlike a lot of schools and educational institutions. Instead of saying, ‘Do not touch these things; they will dumb you down’, Haileybury is accepting that they are part of our modern landscape and we need to lean in to using them in a sensible way. 

Andrew McGregor is a maths teacher. My dad was a maths teacher as well. I remember both of them telling me in different forms, ‘I am a maths teacher. How many new ways can I be taught to teach maths?’ However, it turns out that there are new ways and new technologies, and we need to lean into some of them. 

Going to the substance of what I spoke about at the conference. I was pleased to represent Hon Jo Hersey, Minister for Education and Training. We were there to, in a sense, lay the foundations and the groundwork for government policy in this area. 

The first thing to note was that our schools span vast distances across urban centres, regional towns and remote and very remote communities, as well as through distance education. We know about the diversity of our school bodies. We recognise the enormous potential of AI to enhance teaching and learning, but equally we are clear that the technology needs to support education, not drive it. The key point we wanted to get across was that human connection, professional judgement and cultural knowledge remain at the heart of learning in the Territory. 

We discussed the Education ministers’ framework for generative AI in schools from February 2023 and, likewise, the work the Department of Education and Training did late last year to create a generative AI policy aligning with its strategic plan, the national framework and the NT Government’s AI ethics policies. Those policies reinforce that we want responsible and well-planned use of generative AI with strong safeguards for privacy, security and inclusivity. 

We want opportunities in this space and for our teachers, as well as our students, to have the necessary professional development, training, tools and processes to meaningfully and positively use AI. Let me be clear, as I was on the day to the panel and the conference: AI is a support tool. This government wants teachers to remain in control and professional judgement to remain paramount because we recognise that there are challenges in this space. Protecting student data and privacy, ensuring age-appropriate use and managing bias, inaccuracies and varying levels of digital literacy are all important considerations when you are touching AI tools. The challenges are not unique to the NT, but they are amplified by our diversity. That is why we are taking a staged approach in this matter. 

The government’s priorities in this space are threefold and clear. The first is improved digital literacy so that we improve trust in our systems through helping students and teachers to understand not just how to use AI tools but also how AI works, its limitations and how to keep applying their own critical judgement. 

Second is ethical implementation by ensuring that only low and medium-risk tools are approved and that these are supported by privacy and security assessments and, where appropriate, we run pilots to test that things are safe and have real educational value. 

Third is partnerships with industry, universities, other jurisdictions and across government. Our government is already doing some of that in collaboration with the South Australian Department for Education on a pilot of EdChat, an AI tool specifically designed for safe use in schools. Hopefully, we will learn from that partnership and can work out what is suitable for use in Northern Territory public education settings. 

Our vision is clear: we want students who can use digital tools safely, confidently and critically. We want communities who can trust that innovation is introduced responsibly with integrity and a focus on strengthening learning. We know that success means fair access to safe and appropriate tools, reducing the administrative load for educators and stronger learning support where it is needed the most. As a result, the government will continue to take a staged careful approach to evaluate some of the pilots I have discussed, listening to school feedback and refining our strategies to reflect the realities of education in the Northern Territory. AI will only strengthen education if it strengthens people. That is the government’s guiding principle. 

It is important to recognise that the world is moving fast on this front and we have to be on the ball or we will be in trouble soon. One of the places that moves slowest in terms of technology adoption in Australia is the High Court of Australia. A recent lecture delivered by Chief Justice Stephen Gageler to all the Justices of the Supreme Court of Japan pointed out—Attorney-General, this may be of interest to you—that the High Court is starting to use AI tools, approved officially. It has systems not to produce judgements but to do a lot of the preliminary work. 

We will find increasingly that this will catch up with all of us in this House and in the education space in particular. It is important that we all have some connection to what is happening in the technology and artificial intelligence spaces. In terms of improving productivity in our society and educational outcomes for our kids, we will all have to become AI savvy going forward. 

On that note, I thank the Assembly for its indulgence.