What Is HSC All My Own Work? A NSW Student Guide

Imagine submitting a physics practical report with your own measurements, but using a graph copied from a classmate, an explanation adapted from a website, and a paragraph substantially rewritten by a tutor. You completed the report, but can you honestly say that all the work is yours?

This is exactly the kind of problem HSC: All My Own Work (AMOW) is designed to address. It is a NSW Education Standards Authority (NESA) program that teaches students how to use information, acknowledge other people’s contributions, and complete their studies honestly. Most students must complete it before being entered into their Preliminary or HSC courses.

Importantly, its principles do not stop applying once you finish the program. They affect how you approach homework, practical investigations, research assignments, group work, and formal HSC assessments.

01What is HSC All My Own Work?

HSC: All My Own Work is a compulsory academic-integrity program administered through NSW schools under NESA requirements.

Its purpose is to help students understand the principles of good scholarship. This means learning how to:

• Locate and use information responsibly.
• Recognise plagiarism and understand why it matters.
• Acknowledge sources and other people’s contributions.
• Respect copyright.
• Work honestly with classmates, teachers, tutors, and other people who support their learning.

The central idea is straightforward: when a teacher assesses your work, the result should accurately represent your own knowledge, understanding, and effort.

This does not mean you must learn everything independently or avoid asking for help. Working with other people is an important part of learning. The distinction is between receiving help that develops your understanding and presenting somebody else’s contribution as your own.

The four topics

The current NESA program contains four topics, completed in numerical order under the direction of a teacher or supervisor.

Each topic contains learning material, which may include videos and interactive activities, followed by a short quiz.

NESA estimates that the complete program takes approximately two to three hours, although the actual time depends on how your school delivers it.

02What do you actually need to complete?

There are two separate things to understand:

1. You must complete the educational program satisfactorily.
2. Your school must formally certify that you have completed it.

Completing an online activity is not necessarily the same as having your official completion recorded.

How the completion process works

Step 1: Complete the four topics.

Start with Topic 1 and work through the remaining topics in numerical order. Your school will tell you whether you are completing the material independently, in a supervised session, or through another delivery method.

Step 2: Complete each topic’s quiz.

At the end of each topic, you will complete a short quiz to check your understanding.

After completing a quiz, you receive an online certificate identifying the topic, your name, and your quiz result.

Step 3: Provide your completion evidence.

Your supervising teacher will tell you how they want to receive your certificates. This may involve downloading them, printing them, taking screenshots, or displaying them on your screen.

The supervisor also determines whether you can progress to the next topic.

Step 4: Your school confirms satisfactory completion.

The principal uses professional judgement, informed by teachers, to decide whether there is sufficient evidence that you have satisfactorily completed the program.

This involves considering whether you have:

• Systematically addressed the program’s content.
• Applied diligence and sustained effort to the activities.
• Achieved some or all of the expected learning outcomes.

The principal then certifies your completion in NESA’s Schools Online system when confirming your Preliminary and HSC course entries.

This final step is important. Your individual quiz certificates provide evidence of topic completion, but your principal is responsible for the formal certification.

Can your school use a different program?

Yes. NESA allows schools to develop an equivalent program that suits their students and educational context.

However, this decision belongs to the school and principal. You should not assume that completing an unrelated online academic-integrity course or attending a tutoring session automatically satisfies the NESA requirement.

If your school uses an alternative program, ask how your completion will be recognised.

When must you complete it?

NESA requires students to complete All My Own Work, or an equivalent program, before they are entered into any Preliminary or HSC course.

Your school determines when the program will be delivered. There is no single statewide day on which every student must complete it.

Many students encounter the program around the transition from Year 10 to Year 11, but the important requirement is that completion happens before the relevant course entries are submitted.

There is one specific exemption: students whose entire Stage 6 pattern of study consists of Life Skills courses do not need to complete AMOW. Students studying a combination of Life Skills and other Stage 6 courses are not covered by this exemption.

You can check the official requirements in NESA’s All My Own Work program and ACE Rule 10.2.1.

03What does ‘your own work’ actually mean?

Suppose you are writing a Mathematics Extension 1 assignment.

You look up a theorem in a textbook, discuss the general method with a friend, and ask a tutor to explain a difficult step. You then write your own proof.

Is this automatically academic misconduct?

No. Using sources and receiving help are not automatically dishonest. The important questions are whether you have acknowledged relevant contributions, followed the assessment conditions, and produced the work that is supposed to demonstrate your own understanding.

NESA identifies several forms of malpractice that help explain where the boundaries lie.

These categories can overlap. For example, copying a classmate’s report without acknowledgement may involve plagiarism and collusion.

The important point is that academic integrity concerns more than copying entire paragraphs. It also covers ideas, calculations, data, diagrams, and contributions from other people.

04How the principles apply to ordinary coursework

You do not need to wait until a major HSC assessment to practise academic honesty.

The same principles are useful when completing ordinary homework, research tasks, practical reports, revision exercises, and class activities.

Here are three situations where students commonly get confused.

1. Using information from textbooks and websites

Imagine you are writing a Chemistry report about factors affecting reaction rates.

You find an explanation in a scientific article that helps you understand why increasing temperature changes the rate of a reaction. You then incorporate that explanation into your report.

There are two ways you might use the information.

Direct quotation

You reproduce the source’s exact wording.

You should:

• Use quotation marks to identify the copied wording.
• Acknowledge the source at the point where you use it.
• Include the full reference in your bibliography, following your teacher’s requirements.

Paraphrasing

You explain the same idea using your own words and sentence structure.

You still need to acknowledge the original source.

Changing the wording does not change where the idea came from. This is one of the most common misconceptions about plagiarism.

A few practical rules make referencing easier:

• Keep a record of sources while researching rather than trying to find them again at the end.
• Acknowledge diagrams, photographs, tables, and external data as well as written explanations.
• Use the referencing format specified by your teacher or subject.
• Do not invent references or include sources you have not actually used.
• Check whether you are permitted to reproduce copyrighted material. Acknowledging an image does not automatically give you permission to reproduce it.

There is one useful distinction. NESA does not require you to formally acknowledge information you learned directly from your teacher in class. However, if you introduce material from an external source, you should acknowledge it appropriately.

2. Working with classmates

Collaborative learning is not the same as collusion.

You can discuss difficult concepts, compare approaches to practice questions, and help each other understand unfamiliar material. These activities can improve your understanding.

The problem arises when collaboration goes beyond what the assessment permits.

Consider a Physics practical investigation involving a pendulum.

Your teacher allows students to work in pairs to collect experimental readings, but each student must submit an individual report.

You and your partner can legitimately collect the same permitted dataset. However, you must independently complete the analysis and explanation required by the task.

If your partner writes an explanation of the results and you copy it into your report with a few words changed, you are no longer demonstrating your own analysis.

The same distinction applies to other subjects.

For practical work, honest reporting also means recording what actually happened.

If your measurements are inconsistent or produce an unexpected result, do not change them to make your graph look better. Keep your original readings and explain possible sources of error.

Fabricating or altering experimental records can amount to misrepresentation.

3. Getting help from a tutor

This is particularly important when you are receiving additional support for challenging HSC subjects.

A tutor can help you understand a difficult concept, demonstrate a similar problem, identify errors in your reasoning, and explain how to approach an unfamiliar question.

For example, a Physics tutor might explain how to apply conservation of momentum using a practice collision problem. You then use that understanding to independently solve a different question in your assessment.

That is fundamentally different from asking the tutor to complete your assessment solution and submitting their working as your own.

NESA specifically identifies submitting work substantially contributed to by another person, including a tutor, coach, or subject expert, as a form of collusion.

A useful distinction is:

At tutorgum, the purpose of tutoring is to develop your ability to solve problems independently. You should leave a lesson better equipped to complete your own work, not with someone else’s assessment answer to submit.

There is also a distinction between ordinary supplementary tutoring and formally studying an entire Stage 6 course through an outside tutor. NESA has separate requirements for the latter, including principal approval and conditions governing the course and tutor. See ACE Rule 13.7: Study with an outside tutor.

05A practical academic-integrity check before submitting

Before submitting an assignment, use these questions to check that your work follows the principles of All My Own Work.

1. Is the task individual or collaborative?

Read the task notification. Identify exactly which parts you are permitted to complete with other people.

2. Have you used another person’s words, ideas, data, or diagrams?

Acknowledge the relevant sources according to your teacher’s requirements.

3. Has someone else substantially contributed to your response?

If another person has written, calculated, designed, or developed a substantial part of work that must be completed independently, do not submit it as your own.

4. Have you reused previous work?

Your own previously submitted work may also need to be acknowledged. Check whether the task permits you to reuse it.

5. Can you explain everything you have submitted?

You should understand your calculations, arguments, experimental results, and conclusions. If you cannot explain a section of your own submission, revisit it before handing it in.

One principle is worth remembering: acknowledging a contribution does not automatically make that contribution permissible.

For example, citing a classmate who wrote your individual assessment response does not make submitting that response acceptable. You must satisfy both requirements: acknowledge other people’s contributions and follow the conditions of the task.

06Who sets the rules: NESA, your school, and UAC?

It is easy to confuse the different organisations involved in your HSC and future university applications. They have separate responsibilities.

What happens if your school suspects malpractice?

The process depends on where the suspected misconduct occurred.

School-based assessment

Your school is responsible for investigating and managing suspected malpractice in its school-based assessment tasks.

NESA requires schools to provide students with written advice about their assessment policies and malpractice procedures. These policies must explain:

• How suspected malpractice is investigated.
• Who makes decisions about alleged offences.
• The possible penalties.
• How students can appeal a decision.

Malpractice in HSC school-based assessment is recorded in the Malpractice Register. Appeals concerning school-based assessment malpractice are resolved at the school level.

HSC examinations

NESA is responsible for investigating suspected malpractice and examination-rule breaches in HSC examinations through its Examination Rules Committee.

Depending on the circumstances, penalties can include:

• A reduction in examination marks.
• Zero marks for the examination.
• Cancellation of the relevant course.

These penalties can affect your eligibility for the HSC.

Not every mistake produces the same outcome. However, you should never assume that an academic-integrity issue is unimportant simply because it occurred in a school assignment rather than a final examination.

Why you should keep drafts and working

Suppose your teacher questions whether a mathematical solution or scientific explanation is genuinely your own.

You may need to demonstrate how you developed the work.

Useful evidence includes:

• Early drafts and successive revisions.
• Research notes and source records.
• Laboratory notebooks and original measurements.
• Mathematical working and calculations.
• Outlines, planning documents, and sketches.
• Version histories showing how your work developed.

NESA specifically identifies these types of evidence as useful when a student needs to demonstrate that their work is their own.

A sensible habit is to keep your working as you go rather than trying to reconstruct it after an issue arises.

If you discover a referencing mistake or are unsure whether a particular contribution is allowed, speak to your teacher before submitting the assessment.

07Questions and solutions

Question 1

You are writing a Chemistry assignment and find a useful explanation of reaction rates in an online article. You completely rewrite the explanation using your own words but retain the original idea.

Do you need to acknowledge the article? Explain your answer.

Solution 1

Yes, you must acknowledge the article because the underlying idea came from another source.

Plagiarism is not limited to copying exact sentences. It can also involve using another person’s ideas or conclusions without appropriate acknowledgement.

Changing the wording does not make the original idea yours.

You should include an appropriate in-text citation and a full reference in your bibliography. If you reproduce the exact wording instead, you should also identify it as a direct quotation.

Question 2

Two students are conducting a Physics practical investigation.

Their teacher allows them to collect one shared set of experimental readings, but requires each student to submit an individual report.

Student A completes the analysis and writes an explanation of the results. Student B copies that explanation, changes several sentences, and includes a reference acknowledging Student A.

Has Student B followed the principles of All My Own Work?

Solution 2

No. Student B has acknowledged the source of the explanation, but has still copied work that was required to be independently produced.

The important distinction is between the shared experimental data, which the teacher explicitly permitted, and the individual analysis, which each student was required to complete independently.

Acknowledging Student A does not override the assessment conditions.

Student B should independently analyse the permitted dataset, produce their own calculations and graph interpretation, and write an original explanation.

If the teacher had required each student to collect their own readings, even sharing the dataset would have breached the task conditions.

Question 3

A student is struggling with a difficult Mechanics question.

During a tutoring session, their tutor explains the relevant conservation principle using a different practice problem. The student then independently solves the assessment question and writes their own working.

Has the student necessarily engaged in malpractice? What would change if the tutor instead wrote the final assessment solution for them?

Solution 3

No, the first situation is not automatically malpractice. The tutor has provided instruction, and the student has independently applied their understanding to the assessment question.

The second situation is different.

If the tutor writes the final solution and the student submits it as their own, the work may constitute collusion because the tutor has substantially contributed to an individual assessment response.

NESA specifically identifies substantial contributions from tutors and subject experts as potential malpractice.

The distinction is not whether the student received help. It is whether the submitted work genuinely demonstrates the student’s own understanding and satisfies the assessment conditions.

Question 4

A student is completing an individual Mathematics Extension 1 proof.

The task instructions explicitly permit students to discuss general mathematical methods with tutors but require the submitted proof to be independently produced. They also prohibit reusing material from previously submitted assessments.

The student attends a tutoring session where a similar proof is explained. Afterwards, they independently develop the required proof.

However, they also copy three sentences from an earlier assignment they submitted, change the wording, and include a reference to their previous work.

They argue that this is acceptable because they have acknowledged the original material.

Can the student submit the proof unchanged?

Solution 4

No. The student cannot submit the proof unchanged because the task explicitly prohibits reusing previously submitted material.

There are two separate contributions to consider.

First, the tutoring session involved discussing a general method using a different problem. The student then independently developed the required proof. This is consistent with the task’s permitted learning support.

Second, the student reused material from an earlier assessment. Although they acknowledged its origin, they still breached the task’s explicit condition against reusing previously submitted material.

This exposes an important distinction between acknowledgement and permission.

A citation tells the teacher where material originated. It does not override an assessment instruction that prohibits its use.

The student should remove the reused passage and develop a fresh explanation based on their understanding of the current problem. They should retain their working and seek clarification from their teacher if they are uncertain about any remaining material.

08How All My Own Work connects to your HSC and ATAR

Completing All My Own Work is one requirement for HSC eligibility. It is not an ATAR calculation requirement, and completing it does not guarantee university admission.

The HSC and ATAR are separate outcomes. NESA administers the HSC, while UAC calculates the NSW ATAR using eligible HSC course results. You can receive an HSC without receiving an ATAR.

If you are planning your university pathway, the next useful distinction is understanding which HSC requirements apply to your chosen pathway and whether you actually need an ATAR.

Read our related guide: Can You Receive an HSC Without an ATAR?.

For the latest official requirements, consult NESA’s All My Own Work program, NESA’s ACE Rules, and the HSC Rules and Procedures guide for your cohort. For university applications, use UAC’s undergraduate applications and offers information.

Requirements checked against official NESA and UAC information available on 9 November 2026.