Last week I spoke with Jeremy Jones on ABC Far North’s Drive program about how teachers — not students — are actually using GenAI: the broken promise of reduced workload, the reality of burnout, marking and assessment, and what happens if machines start grading machines.
You can hear the whole show on ABC listen: Queensland Northern Drive, Monday 17 August 2026. My segment starts about eight minutes in.
Here’s the full transcript, lightly edited for clarity.
Jeremy Jones: So when we talk about artificial intelligence in schools, the conversation almost always spirals into panic over students skipping homework. What gets left out is how teachers are using the exact same tools to draft lesson plans, write student reports, automate grading, and basically fundamentally change how they teach your kids. Today on Drive you’re joined by Dr Leon Furze, one of the country’s leading AI in education consultants, to think about what happens when educators start offloading their work to algorithms, using generative AI models to supercharge their teaching. Leon, thank you for joining us. Are teachers using AI to supercharge teaching, or just to survive the admin grind?
Leon Furze: I think teachers are really cautious. We’re working with students, with young people, so we have to be really careful with how we’re approaching new technologies. But I do think there’s been a narrative sold into schools since day one of AI that it’s going to solve workload problems and make things more efficient. I’m not really seeing that. I hear from a lot of teachers who say that AI has increased their workload — if nothing else, they’re spending more time trying to figure out if students have used it. But there are definitely plenty of schools and educators out there that are using the technologies well, and really conscientiously, to help with the way that they do their work.
Jeremy Jones: Burnout is a huge issue for Australian teachers, and a lot of that has to do with the mountains of administrative work that goes alongside the traditional teaching role. Can you see AI playing a role in that scenario?
Leon Furze: Well, actually, my Master’s a few years ago was focused on teacher burnout. And one of the things that can really help with reducing the risk of burnout is getting teachers to really value themselves and see themselves as professionals and experts. One of the problems with AI is it moves so quickly that no one’s really an expert in it. So giving teachers a bit of time and a bit of space to learn about these new technologies, and figure out where they fit in their day-to-day work, is really important. You can’t just throw a technology into a school and hope that it’s magically going to solve those problems.
Jeremy Jones: Because you studied burnout — is there a risk here that we look at something like AI and don’t actually address those underlying causes of teacher burnout?
Leon Furze: Yeah, absolutely. We know about the administrative tasks that teachers face, the marking workload, but also the interpersonal challenges — we’re working with hundreds of students and young people and there are conflicts, and we’re working with complex situations with parents. We’re working with people, basically. So working with people is always going to be really hard. And I think the risk might be that we see AI as a way out of some of the administrative stuff, but we lose sight of the fact that teaching isn’t really an administrative job. It’s a people job.
Jeremy Jones: Let’s get to that and the use of AI. Is it mainly in things like lesson planning and marking, or is it more than that? Is it something that’s sort of happening in the background?
Leon Furze: I see teachers using AI really effectively for research, for using deep research tools and applications. I see them using it well to bounce ideas around. If you’re in a regional school and you’re a faculty of one, you might not have somebody to share ideas with — or if you’re teaching a subject like media or drama where you don’t have colleagues in a faculty. So bouncing those ideas around can be really helpful. But then also just day-to-day things like helping with communications, helping to convey information amongst colleagues, emails, sending things home to parents and those kinds of communications. AI can reduce some of the mental overhead of that kind of work, I think.
Jeremy Jones: All right, let’s get into the juicy side of it. So when a student uses AI to write an assignment — I’m sure that is common — but a teacher uses AI to mark it, are we seeing a scenario where machines are effectively grading other machines?
Leon Furze: I think that might be happening. We don’t want to be naive. One problem I see is that because teachers are getting sold on this idea of efficiency, and the use of AI for marking and assessment, you almost feel compelled to do it. But assessment’s one of those tricky things — there are so many other ways we can do assessment, and we know that one of the things students really value is face-to-face, in-person assessment. AI doesn’t really take over that part. I reckon if we can find ways to help students understand how to use AI well themselves — feedback-seeking behaviours, seeking help from AI, running their own work through it — then the teacher doesn’t need to do it on their behalf. And it might free up a little bit more time for teachers to have richer, meaningful conversations face-to-face with students, which is much higher-value assessment.
Jeremy Jones: We know of examples of kids being busted using AI. Do we know of any examples of teachers being busted?
Leon Furze: Look, not off the top of my head. I wouldn’t be surprised if a few teachers have been caught out with things like hallucinations and fabricated information from chatbots. These are technical issues with a technology that nobody’s really had the time to understand how to use. Teachers aren’t getting a lot of support. It’s really confusing in terms of what we’re being told from the sector about how we can and can’t, and should and shouldn’t, use the technology. So everybody’s just kind of fumbling through this at the same time. I wouldn’t be surprised if teachers are making exactly the same kinds of mistakes as students along the way. I’ve been using this stuff for four years now and I’m still making mistakes with the technology daily.
Jeremy Jones: Well, Dr Leon Furze, thanks for joining us on Drive.
Leon Furze: Thank you very much, Jeremy. Have a good day.
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