RATIONALE
1. Purpose and Scope
This policy gives MEI teachers a shared, defensible way to do three things: teach students to use artificial intelligence responsibly, respond when improper AI use or plagiarism is suspected, and apply consequences consistently. It applies to all Grade 11 and 12 OSSD credit courses.
The goal is not to police technology. It is to protect what an Ontario diploma is meant to certify — that the student did the thinking. AI is a research instrument our students should learn to use well, the way a historian uses an archive or a search engine. It is not a substitute for their reasoning, and it is not a shortcut around the work that makes them capable. Used badly, it leaves students dependent and hollow. Used well, it helps them find the terrain faster so they can spend their effort on the argument. This policy exists to keep students on the right side of that line.
2. Our Stance, in One Paragraph
AI may help a student map a topic; it may not produce the student’s thinking. A student can use AI to find what has been said, to locate sources, to test whether they have understood something. The student must still generate the thesis, the argument, the judgement, the voice.
MEI believes that AI has become a normal and welcome part of the academic journey for our students. MEI does not believe that AI use replaces the student’s own reasoning. When we are unsure which of these has happened, we have to look at the student’s process and start a conversation — we do not reach for a detector and a verdict.
3. Why This Policy Sits Inside Growing Success
Ontario has no province-wide rulebook for AI in schools. As of mid-2026, the Ministry of Education had not issued province-specific guidance. Boards, independent schools, and individual teachers are filling the gap themselves.
Growing Success: Assessment, Evaluation, and Reporting in Ontario Schools
- Two features of Growing Success that apply to the misuse of AI:
Professional judgement is the cornerstone. Growing Success treats assessment as a human, judgement-based activity — closer to an art than a science, in the Ministry’s own framing. It does not ask teachers to run software and accept its output; it asks them to weigh evidence and decide. That is the posture this policy takes toward AI. - Learning Skills and Work Habits are reported separately from the grade. The six categories — Responsibility, Organization, Independent Work, Collaboration, Initiative, and Self-Regulation — describe process behaviours. When a student leans on AI in a way that shortcuts their own work, the clearest and most defensible place to name it is often here, in Independent Work and Self-Regulation, not only in the academic mark. This lets us address behaviour honestly without thinking we can measure how many sentences a machine wrote.
4. Teaching the Proper Use: the Green / Amber / Red Framework
Every MEI assessment carries a default AI setting, chosen by the teacher and stated on the task. There are two hard poles — Green (go) and Red (stop) — with an Amber band between them for the disclosed, bounded use that applies to most assignments.
| Setting | What it means, and the kind of use it covers |
| GREEN — Go | AI use is open and encouraged; no disclosure beyond normal citation. Used where using AI well is itself part of the skill — mapping a topic, generating study questions, checking your own understanding, brainstorming counter-arguments to stress-test your position. |
| AMBER — Proceed, with disclosure | AI is permitted for specific, bounded purposes, and the student discloses what they used it for. This is the normal case for research assignments. Green uses plus: help organizing notes, suggesting structure, explaining a difficult source, translating a passage — provided the student’s own analysis, argument, and words are the product. |
| RED — Stop | AI may not be used to produce this work, or this part of it. The red lines below also apply to every task regardless of its setting. |
The default is Amber unless the teacher says otherwise.
Red lines — these are non-negotiable
- Using AI to generate the student’s thesis, central argument, or interpretation.
- Submitting AI-drafted text as the student’s own writing.
- Any AI-fabricated citation, quotation, source, or data. AI invents these confidently; a fabricated source is a fabrication whether or not the student knew.
- Using AI to write a reflection, or reading from an AI-generated script during a live presentation. Reflections and live discussion are where we confirm the learning is real.
- Leaning on AI’s default framing where the task asks for an authentic non-Western or primary-source perspective. AI tends to reproduce Western-centric summaries; the Global Lens requires the student to find other sources that are not often found through AI.
Example — the Learning Lunch
Below is how this maps onto the Learning Lunch assignment:
| GREEN | Mapping the topic landscape before choosing an angle; generating questions to test your own understanding; brainstorming possible counter-arguments to pressure-test your thesis; explaining an unfamiliar term or event to yourself. |
| AMBER | Suggesting a structure for your PEAL notes; proposing search terms or candidate sources that you then find and verify yourself; a first-pass translation of a non-English primary source that you check; tightening the grammar of notes you wrote. Disclose each in your Source Notes. |
| RED | Writing your thesis or your “So What?” conclusion; generating the argument you present; listing any bibliography citation without independently confirming the source exists and says what you claim; writing your 350-word reflection; reading AI text aloud during the lunch. |
5. Disclosure: the Normal Case
Because we permit the use of AI, disclosure has to be easy, or it won’t happen. On any task where AI is allowed, students add a short AI-use note to their Source Notes — a sentence or two naming the tool and what it was used for (Appendix B).
For example: A student who discloses “I used Perplexity to surface three possible sources, then verified and read them myself” has done exactly the right thing.
6. Making Process Visible: the CoGrader Checkpoint Model
The most important MEI policy is what we do rather than AI-based text detection. We make the student’s process visible, and we let the visible process — not a piece of software — tell us whether the thinking is theirs. The MEI model links three kinds of evidence:
- Named document versions. Students work in Google Docs and save named versions at checkpoints (“thesis draft,” “sources verified,” “PEAL notes,” “slides”). Version history shows the work taking shape over time.
- Timestamped checkpoints. Each assignment has a checklist whose items are ticked and timestamped at checkpoints. The rhythm of the work becomes obvious and verifiable.
- The live conversation. For assignments like the Learning Lunch and Teach to Learn, the student teaches the topic and takes unscripted questions. This is the most powerful integrity check we have. The student who did not do the thinking cannot host the conversation. Work that was generated gets disclosed in the Q&A session.
What the CoGrader tool is — and is not
It surfaces key points to address so the teacher has something concrete to look at and, when needed, something concrete to ask about. It is a conversation-starter, not a verdict. MEI does not use AI-text detectors to decide guilt. Those tools are unreliable; they produce false positives. It tells a teacher where to begin a professional-judgement conversation. That is all we ask it to do, and it is enough.
7. When Improper AI Use or Plagiarism Is Suspected
When something doesn’t sit right — a submission that doesn’t match the student’s demonstrated ability, a checkpoint history that skips the work, fabricated-looking citations, a presenter who can’t answer questions about their own argument the response is a process grounded in Growing Success: professional judgement.
MEI Teachers follow this protocol:
- Teachers look at the process evidence first. Version history, checkpoint timestamps, Source Notes, and the student’s performance in live discussion. This often resolves the question on its own, in either direction.
- Have a supportive, non-accusatory conversation with the student. Ask them to walk you through how they built the work — their sources, their choices, their argument. Genuine authors can do this; it also surfaces honest confusion about what was allowed, which is common and is not misconduct.
- Consult administration. For anything beyond a clear, minor misunderstanding, keep the MEI Administration in the loop before deciding on a consequence, as Growing Success requires.
- Keep the purpose in view. The aim is to get the student back to doing — and being seen to do — their own thinking. Even where a consequence is warranted, restoring the learning is the point.
This places the burden on us – MEI teachers and Admin. The process evidence and a conversation, not certainty from an AI Turnitin score. We would rather occasionally miss a case than routinely brand honest students, and the structure of the assessments (disclosure, checkpoints, live discussion) is designed so that sustained dishonesty is hard to hide anyway.
8. Consequences: a Growing-Success-Aligned Ladder
Growing Success is explicit about how consequences for cheating and plagiarism are decided. The teacher determines them in consultation with administration; the principal holds the final decision; and parents or guardians are informed of both the infraction and the consequence in every case. The factors the teacher weighs are the student’s grade level, their maturity, the number and frequency of incidents, and their individual circumstances. MEI permits a mark of zero, but it is a professional-judgement decision made with admin, applied case by case, never an automatic penalty, not usually on the first offence, and never a substitute for addressing the learning.
The ladder below scales with severity and repetition, mirroring the university model our students are heading toward.
| Tier and when it applies | Response | Effect on the grade |
| Tier 1 First or minor; likely a misunderstanding of what was allowed. | Educative. A conversation re-teaching the expectation; the student redoes or completes the affected work showing their own thinking; the behaviour is named in Learning Skills (Independent Work / Self-Regulation) where appropriate; parents informed. | The work is redone (or an alternate assignment is submitted) and is assessed normally. |
| Tier 2 Repeated Tier-1 behaviour, or a more substantial breach — e.g. undisclosed AI-drafted sections, some fabricated citations. | Meeting with student and parents; work redone under closer supervision or replaced with an alternative assessment; academic leadership consulted; Learning Skills impact documented; the incident recorded. | Assessed on demonstrable own work; the mark may be reduced to reflect what the student can show is theirs, by professional judgement. |
| Tier 3 Deliberate, repeated, or on a major assessment or exam — e.g. a wholesale AI-generated submission, systematic fabrication. | Principal-led; formal meeting with student and parents; documented on the student’s record; consequence set by professional judgement in consultation with administration. | A mark of zero on the affected assessment is available at this tier, applied case by case; where possible, a supervised chance to demonstrate the underlying learning is still offered, so the credential reflects real achievement. |
Across all tiers: teacher-and-administration consultation, principal final decision, and parent communication are required by Growing Success. Consequences attached to the affected work, not the student’s character, and the Learning Skills record — not the academic grade alone — is the primary home for naming process behaviours over time.
9. Roles and Responsibilities
- Students do their own thinking, use AI within the stated setting for each task, disclose bounded use, and verify every source.
- Teachers set an AI setting on every assessment, teach the framework, keep process visible through checkpoints, respond through professional judgement rather than detection, and involve administration when a consequence is in view.
- Administration and the principal consult on consequences, hold final decisions, and ensure consistency across courses.
- Parents and guardians are informed of any infraction and its consequence and are partners in getting the student back to their own work.
