The internet gives us many things.

Information at the touch of a button, the means to instantly connect with family on the other side of the world, online shopping, same-day delivery and, it seems, the chance to soon convincingly cheat on course work.

The rapid development of technology like ChatGPT, which can generate human like responses, has prompted education leaders to say exams will have to become more important in the years ahead.

Despite hopes among many that a pause during the pandemic might have shown officials there could be other ways to showcase what pupils can do, greater emphasis and not less could be placed on testing in schools thanks to the arrival of AI.

Against a backdrop of concerns over the mental health and well-being of Generation Z - and taking into account how overstretched schools already are when it comes to pastoral care – this isn’t great news.

Not to mention more pressing problems with behaviour, attendance and attitude since schools reopened after lockdown that also require immediate attention and resources.

While plagiarism has always existed on some level, teachers had become somewhat expert at identifying when students - whose work they know well – had whipped text from websites.

But marking coursework and homework is fast becoming an ‘impossible task’ thanks to a bot able to generate entire essays as if you’d written them.

The only alternative – it is suggested – would be work under ‘direct’ supervision in controlled conditions, which sounds rather like more testing of sorts.

English children are supposedly already tested longer, harder and younger than anywhere else in the world.

The Tony Blair Institute previously argued compulsory assessments at 16 should be scrapped in favour of something more able to prepare soon-to-be adults for the world of work. While criticism of this year’s Year 6 SATs paper has fuelled debate about how we appropriately assess 10 and 11-year-olds – if we should at all?

And yet – with computers now able to convincingly churn out homework and coursework essays – the only way in which teachers might soon be able to accurately gauge pupil progress on a regular basis is to sit them in a room minus all of that technology and see what they can do with a pen and paper – more often.

The pandemic threw us a brief opportunity to re-set the education system. A chance to remove some of those high-pressured moments in which children are given just one opportunity to perform.

An opportunity also, to find a system that also takes into account the problems the pandemic has created for youngsters in terms of motivation, self-discipline and structure – all of which make sitting and doing well in exams problematic.

But if the Department for Education doesn't give schools the time, money and resources to establish how they can accurately assess children around the involvement of a robot, pupils face climbing aboard the exam merry-go-round more often. And that isn’t good news for anyone.