London — Artificial intelligence has made it “close to impossible” to fairly assess university coursework in England. That is the finding of the Office for Students (OfS), England's higher education regulator, in a report published on Tuesday (11) in partnership with Advance HE.
The study, titled Making AI work for students, heard from more than 300 students and staff at at least 127 universities and colleges between June and September 2026, including 91 students or student representatives.
What the report found
According to the survey, AI use in essays, dissertations and open-book exams is widespread — and often undetectable. Students reported that peers completed assessments with AI help “in just a few minutes” and received similar grades to those who did the work without AI. Some submitted entire papers written with ChatGPT and afterwards could not recall basic details of the content.
Lecturers described batches of submissions with identical style and references, and the report notes that AI detection tools do not consistently identify use of the technology. Many students also said they were unclear about when they may — or may not — use AI in assessed work.
In-person exams and sanctions
In response, the OfS announced it will require institutions to ensure assessments are valid and reliable measures of students' knowledge and skills. In many cases, that will mean secure, AI-free formats: in-person examinations, presentations, oral exams (vivas), performance-based assessments and practical tasks.
Institutions that fail to comply could face sanctions, such as specific conditions of registration, monetary penalties and suspension of access to student support funding or OfS grant funding. No compliance deadline was set in the announcement.
Josh Fleming, the OfS's director of strategy and delivery, called the problem a “generational risk” to the higher education system, capable of undermining students' learning and institutions' ability to assess them. The UK Department for Education said it expects the OfS's regulatory framework on AI to be “explicit, strong and durable”.
What it means
Advance HE announced it will launch an AI-focused support programme for institutions in early 2027. Many universities are already testing alternatives, such as oral exams, process-based assessments and tasks in which students critically revise AI-generated text.
England's move is one of the clearest signs yet that the institutional response to generative AI in education lies less in detecting use of the tool than in redesigning assessment — a debate likely to reach other countries in the coming months.
Featured image: students during a final exam at the University of Vienna on 25 June 2005. Photo by KF, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
Sources
- Office for Students — Artificial intelligence in higher education
- Advance HE — Universities should help students develop AI skills while protecting confidence in degrees
- The Decoder — UK regulator threatens universities with sanctions unless they adopt AI-proof exam formats
Transparency: this article was produced with the assistance of artificial intelligence, cross-checked against public posts on X and sources from the internet. We recommend consulting the original sources to verify the facts.
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