Set your family's AI homework rules before school starts

Why the first week decides the whole year

By October, the rule you set is the rule you enforce under pressure — late at night, with a tired kid and a deadline. If nothing was agreed in advance, whatever happens that night becomes the precedent. Families who set the line in the first week aren't stricter; they're just not negotiating it during a fight.

The other reason to move early: schools publish their AI policy in the first days of term, usually inside the syllabus or the student handbook, and most parents never read it. If your household rule is looser than the school's, your child follows yours and gets penalised under theirs.

The three rules that cover almost everything

Long AI policies fail because nobody remembers them. Three lines survive the school year.

• AI can explain, quiz and check. It can restate a concept in simpler words, invent practice problems, or ask your child questions about a draft they already wrote.
• AI cannot draft, finish or fix. No first paragraphs, no completed problem sets, no "make this sound better" passes over work that gets graded.
• Anything AI touched gets said out loud. Not punished — disclosed. The consequence for telling you is zero; the consequence for hiding it is the only one that exists.

That third rule is what keeps you informed all year. Kids hide AI use because disclosure is the thing that gets punished. Remove the penalty for honesty and you keep visibility into how they're actually working.

Adjust for the subject, not the child

The same rule can't cover a lab report and a spelling list. Set the line by assignment type in that first conversation:

• Writing — AI may help brainstorm and may quiz them on their own argument. It may not produce sentences that end up in the submission.
• Math — AI may explain a method after an honest attempt. It may not produce the steps for the assigned problems. See how to help with math homework if the method looks unfamiliar to you too.
• Science — AI may check whether a conclusion actually answers the question. It may not write the CER paragraph.
• Reading and research — AI may summarise a source your child already read. Summaries as a substitute for reading are the fastest way to lose the skill the assignment is teaching.

Read the school's policy in five minutes

Search the syllabus PDF or handbook for "artificial intelligence", "AI", "generative" and "academic integrity". You are looking for three specifics: whether AI use must be cited, whether any AI use is permitted at all in that class, and what evidence the school requires before an integrity finding. That last point matters, because many schools rely partly on detector scores that flag honest work.

If the policy is vague — most are — email the teacher one question in the first week: "Is AI allowed for brainstorming and explanation in your class, and do you want it cited?" A written answer in September is worth a great deal in March.

Agree on the 30-second check now

One habit does more than any rule: before work is submitted, your child explains it out loud in their own words. What was the question, what did you do, why that way. A child who did the thinking answers in seconds and gets slightly impatient. A child who didn't gets vague, or repeats the wording on the page.

Agree in advance that this isn't an accusation and it happens every time, to everyone, on good nights and bad. Made routine in week one, it costs nothing. Introduced in November because you're suspicious, it reads as a trial.

Set up the tools once, in August

If your child uses ChatGPT, Gemini or Copilot for school, do the account setup before the workload starts: correct age on the account, parental controls switched on, memory and chat history settings chosen deliberately, and — most usefully — history left on so there's a record of how the work happened.

That history is also your best protection. If your child is ever accused of using AI, document version history and chat logs showing the work being built are far stronger evidence than any argument you can make.

Write it down and sign it

A rule that exists only in memory gets relitigated every week. Put the three lines on one page, add the subject-by-subject notes, and have your child sign it — ours is a printable family AI agreement you can fill in tonight. Stick it where homework happens.

Then revisit it once, in October. Assignments change, teachers vary, and a rule you refuse to revise is a rule your child stops telling you about.

When you're not sure what happened

Some nights the work comes back and you genuinely can't tell. Paste it into our AI homework checker and you'll get a plain-language read on how much of it looks like your child's own thinking, plus the specific questions to ask them out loud. If the problem is the opposite — you can't explain the concept because it's taught differently now — paste the assignment instead and get the concept without the answer.