By Emily Kowal
Publication Date: 2026-05-26 19:00:00
Twelve-year-old Harry Joseph once programmed a robot for the Can-Can and knows his way around a spreadsheet. But when his class was asked to distinguish real photos from AI-generated fakes, the Barker College sixth-grader said they were about 70 percent wrong.
Despite growing up surrounded by screens, smart devices and the internet and enthusiastically learning about artificial intelligence, Australian students have recorded their worst digital literacy results since testing began two decades ago.
A national assessment by the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA) has found that by 2025 only 50 per cent of sixth form students met or exceeded the information and communications technology (ICT) proficiency standard. For tenth grade students, that number fell to 37 percent – the lowest recorded result since…
