MLC School AI Adoption: A Strategic Journey into the Future of Education

MLC School AI Adoption: A Strategic Journey into the Future of Education

As Head of ICT, I am delighted to share an update on MLC School’s strategic journey with Artificial Intelligence (AI) and our commitment to integrating this transformative technology responsibly, ethically, and effectively across the entire school community.

The rapid emergence of Generative AI presents an unprecedented opportunity for educational innovation. Our approach, guided by the newly ratified MLC School AI philosophy, is to harness this power to enhance critical and creative thinking in our students and reduce administrative load for our staff, fostering a supportive, agile, and innovative learning environment.

Successful CoPilot AI Rollout for Staff

A significant milestone was achieved in early Term 2, 2025, when we successfully deployed full Microsoft CoPilot AI access to all teaching and administrative staff. This full business-grade rollout followed extensive planning and testing by our IT and AI Taskforce teams.

The Impact on Staff Efficiency (The ‘Digital Assistant’):
CoPilot is already proving to be a valuable digital assistant for our educators. Preliminary metrics from the rollout show an estimated average time saving of 0.8 hours per staff member per week. These gains are being realised through:

  • Email Efficiencies: Streamlining communication via email summarisation and draft generation, as well as email coaching.
  • Document Assistance: Utilising CoPilot within Word, PowerPoint, and Excel for tasks like summarising documents, content creation, and data analysis.

This reduction in low-impact administrative tasks is designed to free up our teachers to focus on what they do best: fostering meaningful human-to-human connections and designing high-quality learning experiences.

A Focus on Governance, Ethics, and Pedagogy

Our AI journey is not just about technology deployment; it is fundamentally about governance, security, and pedagogy.

1. The AI Taskforce and School Policy:
Since May 2024, our dedicated AI Working Group (Taskforce), comprised of teaching, non-teaching, and executive staff, has been central to shaping our strategy. This group is focused on understanding the Australian AI Framework, the AI Assessment Scale, and developing robust school-wide policy. We have launched a Viva Engage working space to serve as a central hub for staff to collaborate, share resources, and provide feedback.

Our AI Taskforce has also collaborated closely with Leon Furze throughout our journey who has brought a wealth of international and education experience to our thinking and findings. Leon Furze is an international consultant, author, and speaker with over fifteen years of experience in secondary and tertiary education and leadership. Leon is studying his PhD in the implications of Generative Artificial Intelligence on writing instruction and education.

2. Data Security and Privacy:
As we scale our AI use, data security is paramount. We have implemented rigorous security and management processes. For instance, to ensure maximum safety at launch, all highly sensitive data e.g. medical, HR, finance and student records etc have been initially excluded from AI ingestion. We are committed to a cautious, phased introduction of AI tools, ensuring they are safely monitored by our IT team and align with our data privacy policies.

3. Custom AI Agents and Professional Learning:
Our staff are actively experimenting with AI in innovative ways:

  • Custom AI Agents: The AI Taskforce is working on building custom AI tools, or ‘Agents,’ trained on specific school documents. For example, the creation of a ‘Friar Lawrence’ Agent designed to tutor students on Romeo and Juliet content, and an ‘AI & eSafety Guide Agent’ to provide staff with quick policy guidance and safe usage tips.
  • Targeted PD: Workshops have been highly successful, such as the one’s focused on several platforms such as Padlet, Canva and Diffit built and run by our Director of E-Learnin, which demonstrated AI’s capacity for differentiating curriculum and quickly creating multilingual texts, a significant benefit for our EAL/D (bilingual) learners and for family communication.

Preparing Our Students for an AI-Augmented World

For our students, our focus is on educating them to be responsible, ethical users. We believe AI is a powerful tool for learning, not a replacement for learning itself.

  • Student Guidance: We have developed and displayed the “AI Check List @ MLC School” posters (grounded in principles of Responsibility, Integrity, Strength, and Empathy) to provide clear guidance on ethical use around the school, stressing the importance of citing sources, verifying information, and using AI as a supplement.
  • The Critical Evaluation Skill: We are challenging students to move beyond accepting AI-generated answers. We are developing teaching strategies that require students to use AI to generate prompts, critically evaluate the AI’s output, and use their uniquely human skills of critical thinking and creativity to refine the content the human interface remains essential for accuracy and ethical judgment.
  • Future Student Access: We are actively planning for safe student access. Discussions are underway regarding the potential use of GenAI with students to support conceptual thinking, with the aim of ensuring all necessary protection (such as the Microsoft 365 license for students aged 13+) and ethical considerations are fully addressed before any wider student rollout. We also continue to focus on AI student-based presentations led by our AI Taskforce members during Academic Care this term. 
 

AI is here to stay, and our commitment is to ensure MLC School students and staff are equipped to thrive in this new digital landscape. We will continue to update you as we take further steps in integrating this exciting technology into the heart of teaching and learning.

– Steve Swarts
Head of Information Technology