S1-S6 cross-subject: the academic integrity declaration — how I used AI on this piece of work (four levels, one page, six columns)

• StageS1-S6
• SubjectCross-subject
• Learning strandthe basic operation of AI / human-machine communication and collaboration / reflection on the application of AI
• Official documentsBlueprint for Digital Education Development in Primary and Secondary Schools · AI Literacy Learning Framework for Primary and Secondary Schools · Guide to Using AI in Teaching in Primary and Secondary Schools · EDBCM No. 156/2026 · Primary Information and Innovation Technology curriculum framework (trial version)
• Time to prepareabout 10 minutes for the teacher's first explanation; about 30 seconds for a student to complete one form

Four levels, L0 to L3, one page, six columns and three fictional examples: a student says in thirty seconds which level applies, where it was used, and how the work was checked and rewritten. The teacher note covers three situations. Not marked, not ranked, and the judgement stays with the subject panel and the school's arrangements.

• AudienceTeachers Students
• ThemeResponsible AI use

• Equipmenttwo editable Word documents (the one-page student declaration and the one-page teacher note); the declaration prints on one page and can go out with the work or be copied separately; the teacher note is for a subject panel's first use
• Version1.0
• Last updated2026-11-05

An academic integrity declaration is not a line saying “I did not copy”. It is a question a student can answer in thirty seconds: which level applies to this piece of work, where the tool was used, and how the work was checked and rewritten.

What this solves

Once a school writes academic integrity into its policy, three things happen — and none of them is a student deliberately concealing anything:

• The declaration becomes a signature. The student signs the last line and records nothing else, so the teacher has a signature and nothing to check it against.
• Only “used” and “not used”. With two boxes, “looked up what a word means” and “the whole section was generated” fall into the same one. That is neither fair nor teachable.
• No teacher has time to check every piece. Five classes of thirty is not a workload for asking “did you write this sentence” one script at a time, so what gets checked is the few students the teacher already sees in the room.

This resource reduces the declaration to three things: four levels (L0 to L3), one page of six columns, and three fictional examples. A one-page teacher note sets out how to use it in three situations — before, during and after — and why the page carries no marks.

Four points belong on the form itself, and they come first:

1. The name “academic integrity declaration”, the four levels L0 to L3 and the six columns are this resource’s suggestion, not an Education Bureau requirement. The Bureau requires schools to uphold academic integrity and to prevent the outsourcing of thinking. No document prescribes the form, the number of levels or the columns.
2. This page does not alter the school’s assessment policy and does not apply to tests or examinations. Those arrangements follow the school’s assessment policy.
3. This page never says that using AI is a breach. Using a tool is not in itself a breach. What the page records is the extent of use and whether the work was checked and rewritten. Whether a piece is accepted, which level is appropriate, and whether a verification record is required are decisions for the subject panel and the school’s arrangements.
4. There is no equivalent official curriculum framework at secondary level. The Primary Information and Innovation Technology curriculum framework is a trial version; this page reuses its vocabulary (academic integrity, the outsourcing of thinking) and does not cite it as a requirement for secondary schools. A trial version is not final, and a school should adjust it to its own situation.

Two things this page does not contain: no named commercial tool, brand or supplier — a tool is recorded by category only; and no personal name or school name. The form has no field for describing how a tool operates, because the page records a student’s judgement, not a product’s features.

Learning objectives

With this page, a student can:

1. Choose one level from L0, L1, L2 and L3, and say why it is that level rather than the one next to it.
2. State where the tool was used: planning, gathering, drafting, revising or proofreading — more than one may apply.
3. Write, in one sentence, the specific checking and rewriting they did — an action, not the words “checked”.
4. Know that L3 requires a separate verification record, and that whether the work is accepted is decided by the subject and the school’s arrangements.
5. Understand that the purpose of the declaration is to make their own account clear and checkable, not to earn a better mark.

The page is also a values exercise: integrity is not passing off a tool’s sentences as your own, and responsibility is checking before you submit and being willing to sign. It is written around the three learning strands of AI literacy — the basic operation of AI, human-machine communication and collaboration, and reflection on the application of AI — and all three bear on it: knowing that a tool produces apparently complete text (basic operation), knowing that you must rewrite and check it (collaboration), and knowing that you answer for your own choices (reflection).

How to use it

The attachments are two Word documents: the one-page student declaration (one page, to go out with the work) and the one-page teacher note (one page, for a subject panel’s first use). Introduce it when the first piece of work is set, in about 10 minutes; afterwards a student needs about 30 seconds per piece.

Step 1: Four levels, L0 to L3 — one only

There are four levels. They are not added to, removed, renamed or merged, and the difference between neighbouring levels is written concretely so that a student can actually choose.

Three points that matter in practice:

• One level only, never a range. If a piece used a tool both for background and for drafting, record the higher level (L2). “L1 to L2” is the same as leaving it blank.
• The line between L2 and L3 is “most”. A section drafted by the tool and rewritten by the student is L2. A piece the tool produced, with the student only tidying it, is L3. When a student cannot decide, they should record the higher level: the higher level asks for one more page of verification and does not turn the piece into a breach.
• L3 is not a prohibition. Whether an L3 piece is accepted is a decision the subject makes against that task’s learning objectives. Some tasks (a piece of original writing, for instance) will not accept it; others (comparing several sources, for instance) will accept it and require the verification record.

Step 2: One page, six columns — fixed

There are six columns. The names and the order do not change, and the teacher’s note is a separate box. A student completes the first six only.

Four points that matter in practice:

• Column 3 allows more than one tick, but the student should be able to say where most of it went. Most pieces use a tool at one or two points; five ticks give a teacher nothing to judge against.
• Column 4 records a category, not a brand. Its purpose is to tell the teacher which part of the work the student did not produce, not to record which company’s product a school or a household uses. Brands change; categories do not.
• Column 5 is the one that matters. It is one sentence, not a paragraph, and it states an action: which source was consulted, which paragraph was rewritten, which figure was removed. A column 5 with no action is a blank.
• The teacher’s note carries no mark. The page is not marked; the note records that a sample was taken, what it showed, and whether a verification record is required.

Step 3: Three fictional examples — format only

All three sentences below are fictional. They show the format only; the names, subjects and content are not real cases and must not be memorised as model answers.

Three reminders:

• The examples show the format, not how to write something impressive. All three are flat and plain. An example more polished than a student’s own record teaches the student to copy the example instead of recording what they did.
• Every sentence states a concrete action. “Checked against the textbook and an official website”, “changed one year to the textbook’s”, “removed the figure” — those are the places a teacher judges the sentence against.
• The examples do not describe how a tool works, and do not describe how to make a tool produce particular content. The page records the extent of use and the checking that followed.

Step 4: Three situations for the teacher

The teacher note covers three situations, in the order the work travels: set, in progress, returned.

Three notes:

• Sampling column 5 during the work is what makes it last. Five to eight pieces per task, ten times a term, is sustainable; checking every piece is done once and then abandoned.
• “Checked” with no action stated means the page is returned for rewriting. This is the only fixed consequence, and it is not a penalty: returning it asks the student to add the action, does not affect the mark, and is recorded nowhere else. Write it into the teacher note so that every teacher does the same thing.
• Comparing with the verification record after the work uses one record to check the other. A student who wrote both the declaration and the verification record on the same piece has given the school two accounts; where they disagree, the first question is which one left something out, not which one is lying.

Step 5: Not marked, and the judgement stays with the subject

The page is deliberately not marked, not ranked, and not linked to teacher appraisal:

• Not marked. A declaration is a record, not a task. Once it carries marks, students choose the “safer” level and the record stops being credible.
• Not ranked. Comparing the spread of L0 to L3 between classes turns tool use into something to be compared.
• Not linked to appraisal. How neatly declarations are completed is not a performance indicator for a teacher; if it were, teachers would ask students to write less, not more.
• The judgement stays with the subject panel and the school’s arrangements. Whether a level is reasonable, whether an L3 piece is accepted, and whether a verification record is required are decisions the subject makes against the learning objectives. A serious case goes through the school’s arrangements — the procedure for that sits with the school’s four-step response to AI-generated harassment.

Answer key and marking notes

This page is not marked. What follows is how a teacher judges whether column 5 stands up; it is not a marking scheme.

Three ways column 5 stands up

Four ways the page comes back for rewriting

• “Checked” — no indication of what was checked or against what.
• “Rewrote some of it” — no indication of which part, or how much.
• “Looked at sources” — no indication of which source.
• “The teacher will understand” — the explanation is left for the reader to complete.

Reading the three fictional examples

• The first is L0: no tool was opened, so columns 3, 4 and 5 may be left blank or marked not applicable.
• The second is L2: the tool produced paragraphs and a structure (column 3 should tick drafting), the student rewrote them (column 5 states the rewriting), and two figures were checked (column 5 gives the source and the result).
• The third is L3: the tool produced most of the content, so a verification record is attached; whether the piece is accepted is a decision the subject makes against that task’s learning objectives.

Four common errors

• Recording L3 for any use at all. Looking up what a word means is L1. Recording L3 for everything empties the level of meaning and hides the pieces that genuinely need a verification record.
• Writing an opinion in column 5. “I thought the tool was helpful” is not a checking action; the column carries actions only.
• Writing a brand in column 4. The column carries a category; brands change, categories do not.
• A mark in the teacher’s note. Once there is a mark the page becomes a task, and the next set of answers is much tidier and much less credible.

Files

Academic integrity declaration: how I used AI on this piece of work (one page for students, editable Word document)

Two pages: page one is the six-column declaration, ready to copy (with the five header facts and the four level names at the top), its column names and order fixed and a separate teacher’s note; page two gives the definition of each level, what it requires, and three fictional examples (one each at L0, L2 and L3, marked as fictional). No column for marks, grades or rank, and no column for a tool brand.

Teacher note (editable Word document, optional)

One page: what the four levels and six columns are for, the three situations (hand out before, sample column 5 during, compare with the verification record after), the practice of returning a page whose column 5 says “checked” with no action, and why the page is not marked, not ranked and not linked to appraisal.

Official documents

Every resource in this library is written to the AI Literacy Learning Framework for Primary and Secondary Schools and falls within the policy scope of the Blueprint for Digital Education Development in Primary and Secondary Schools.

This resource maps to:

• Blueprint for Digital Education Development in Primary and Secondary Schools (three-fold leaflet, p.2): requires digital and AI education to be planned in the School Development Plan, with the arrangements explained to teachers, pupils and parents; a declaration that fits on one page and can be checked is part of explaining those arrangements.
• Supplement I: AI Literacy Learning Framework for Primary and Secondary Schools (p.1-4): sets out the three learning strands — the basic operation of AI, human-machine communication and collaboration, and reflection on the application of AI; this resource touches all three and centres on the third.
• Supplement II: Guide to Using AI in Teaching in Primary and Secondary Schools (p.2-4): principle 6, understand it deeply and use it with care, which notes that a tool produces inaccurate content; column 5, how the work was checked and rewritten, is written to it.
• EDBCM No. 156/2026 (Supplement I, section 4): upholding academic integrity and preventing the outsourcing of thinking. The four levels and six columns are one way of recording that in a school, but the levels, the columns and the form are this resource’s suggestion, not an Education Bureau requirement.
• EDBCM No. 156/2026 (Supplement I, section 3): professional judgement. Sampling column 5 rather than reading every piece, and returning a page that says “checked” with no action, both rest on this.
• EDBCM No. 156/2026 (Supplement II, Teacher Information Pack, “4. Key messages, 4. For students”): compliance with the law and safety. Recording a category rather than a brand in column 4, and collecting no chat logs, both rest on this.
• Primary Information and Innovation Technology curriculum framework (trial version): this page reuses its vocabulary (academic integrity, the outsourcing of thinking) and does not cite it as a requirement for secondary schools. There is no equivalent official curriculum framework at secondary level; a trial version is not final, and a school should adjust it to its own situation.

Learning strands: the basic operation of AI / human-machine communication and collaboration / reflection on the application of AI

Official documents page: https://www.edb.gov.hk/en/edu-system/primary-secondary/applicable-to-primary-secondary/it-in-edu/debp.html

This page is an independent Beets teaching resource, not an official EDB document. The name “academic integrity declaration”, the four levels L0 to L3 and the six columns are this resource’s suggestion for schools to adopt, and a school may adjust them; they must not be presented as an Education Bureau requirement. The Bureau requires schools to uphold academic integrity and to prevent the outsourcing of thinking, and does not prescribe the form, the number of levels or the columns. There is no equivalent official curriculum framework at secondary level; the primary framework is a trial version and this page reuses its vocabulary only. This page does not alter the school’s assessment policy, and tests and examinations follow that policy; whether a piece is accepted, and at which level, is decided by the subject panel and the school’s arrangements. Using AI is not in itself a breach.

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