From the Principal

From the Principal

My goodness, the Tildesley Tennis Tournament this week has been so exciting – with more nervous nail-biting (by me!) predicted for day three. Our team is demonstrating great sportsmanship, spirit and finely-honed skills on the court, despite the heat, and I look forward to watching the finals play out tomorrow. In the meantime, a huge congratulations to our Swimming and Diving teams for their outstanding efforts at the igsa championships held at SOPAC last week, resulting in an overall win for our swimmers and second place for our divers. Such an exciting day and so many PBs! Great job, all!

Today’s newsletter focuses on clarifying the College’s position on artificial intelligence (AI) and how we are employing AI tools for teaching and learning while preserving academic integrity. This is in response to a growing number of conversations with parents who are keen to understand our stance on the role of AI in education given its growing presence in other aspects of our lives.

Pymble pioneers the way

The logical place to begin this overview is our Digital Intelligence pillar, which, as you know, is one of four pillars for teaching and learning outlined in our Watch Us Change the World strategy. This pillar reflects our commitment to upskilling students and staff to use ‘technology for good’, which is the opposite of the fear-based and shut-it-down mentality that often characterises discussions about AI in education. In line with the Australian Framework for Generative AI in Schools, our aim is to guide students and staff to become responsible and ethical users of AI in ways that benefit students, schools and society. Other recent examples of our ‘technology for good’ approach is our Pymble Wise Phone Initiative and the pending launch of our Pymble Drone Academy.

We are incredibly fortunate to be led by pioneers in this space, our Deputy Principal, Mrs Christine Kenny, and our Director of Innovative Learning Technologies, Mr Anthony England, who are ably supported by our Digital Learning Leaders and academic teams across the College. Mr England is an expert in this field, having been invited to submit a report into the use of Generative AI in the Australian Education System, speak on the AI panel at the recent Sydney Morning Herald Schools Summit, and share his learnings on various podcasts, including Cracking the AI Code – One School’s Critical Learnings for Success, which is well worth a listen for those who want to dive deeper into this topic.

The 4S Framework in his report shows how we evaluate the application of AI at Pymble.

  • First and foremost, it must be safe, in terms of privacy and data security, and ethically sound.
  • It must be seamless and easy to use.
  • It must be supportive with a deep understanding of the users’ needs and goals.
  • It must be superior, elevating the quality and outcomes of education beyond its traditional limitations.

Meet our bespoke Pymble chatbots

In addition to safety, trustworthiness of AI is a huge issue. For this reason, we believe that building our own suite of AI tools is the best way for Pymble to meet both the guidelines for Generative AI in the Australian Education System and the 4S Framework to support student learning.

Unlike outsourced AI tools from the big tech companies, bespoke Pymble chatbots prioritise students as ‘detectives’ or ‘co-pilots’ over focusing on the output. Each tool functions in a slightly different way but all are prompted by student questions or input, which in turn prompts the user to take the next exploratory step or to consider the topic from a different perspective. This process leaves ‘AI footprints’ for teachers to assess students’ thinking, growth and mastery of the topic they are learning.

Teachers are exploring how students could use a range of Pymble chatbots including:

  • Assessment Task Review – to provide feedback on drafts
  • Document IT – to turn notes into an organised document
  • Tutor McTutorFace – a general purpose tutor
  • Debater – to offer counter opinions to help students prepare for their debate
  • Values Coach – to overcome a difficult issue, guided by our five College values
  • Quiz Master – designed to quiz students and prompt them to review their learnings on a topic

As always, our girls are right there in the arena, having a go, experimenting, learning, giving feedback and co-creating with our staff and their peers. A great example is our upcoming Student AI Symposium on Wednesday 28 May, headed up by our Technologies Prefect, Sophia Chang (Year 12), in collaboration with Mr England, our Digital Learning Leaders in the Hub and the Learning Prefects team. Now in its second year, this event is open to secondary students from schools all over Sydney, offering a platform to share ideas and consider what lies ahead for AI in terms of their education and future careers.  

The organisers are currently looking for a keynote speaker who will inspire our girls and their guests from other schools – if this sounds like you or someone you know, please feel free to email Mr England with a suggestion and a link to their current bio on aengland@pymblelc.nsw.edu.au

Windows into AI in the classroom

One of our strategic intents in 2025 is for every student from Year 5 to Year 12 to experience AI as a learning tool, and our staff are continually coming up with new ways to deliver this important learning experience.

The following examples show some of the many ways AI is being explored in classrooms across the campus.

Junior School

Year 5 students use Mooshie, a chatbot that supports Mars exploration challenges ranging from rover design to sustainability. Mooshie has been particularly effective in helping the girls to rapidly prototype and break down complex concepts.

Year 6 students engage with Maisy Meadow Mouse, a wise farming chatbot that guides reflection on engineering tasks. These chatbots provide references and encourage critical thinking by prompting connections rather than giving direct answers.

Mr Dan Brown
Head of STEM K-6

Secondary School

In PDHPE, we use an AI chatbot to help develop students’ creation of a research question for investigation as part of an assessment in Year 11 Health and Movement Science. Teachers also use AI to create sample responses to questions for students to critique and to create initial marking rubric for tasks. 

Mrs Alison Cruz
Head of PDHPE 

Language teachers use AI to create texts for reading and listening comprehension exercises (which they tweak as needed to ensure they match the students’ learning), for ideas for lesson activities, and for creating pictures as images, which are important in second language learning. 

Mrs Salina Bussien
Head of Modern and Classical Languages

AI is used by Year 12 Visual Arts students to refine critical and historical written responses to essay questions. Students are explicitly instructed on the creation of bespoke prompts to generate feedback on practice essays. These prompts link student responses to NESA standards, HSC marking guidelines, HSC examiners feedback and syllabus documents. Students then refine their essays according to this generalised AI feedback before submitting their work to their teacher to provide more nuanced comments and guidance.

Ms Brigiat Maltese
Head of Visual Arts

Year 10 Textiles students use the Pymble AI Assistant Chatbotas a tool to provide constructive feedback on their work. They then use this feedback to create a final podcast or video presentation, along with a self-evaluation reflecting on their submission and their use of AI in creating it.

Mr Peter Ellis
Head of Technological and Applied Studies (TAS)

Year 9 Commerce students are using AI in their current assessment task to evaluate examples of how AI tools can be used by consumers to seek redress for consumer protection issues. Year 11 Business Studies/Geography students are working with IT to develop a simple chatbot to assist them with suggestions for research topics, and Year 8 Geography students are developing effective prompts to construct images of places with improved liveability.

Ms Debra Owens
Head of Geography, Business and Economics (GBE)

In Mathematics, we use AI to check reports and solutions, and to frame questions.

Mrs Catrina Kerr
Head of Mathematics

In Science, students use AI in an assessment task to compile fact-checked information for the whole topic, and to generate data and graphs that we can use in questions. Teachers also use it to sift through HSC papers and pick out specific topic questions, to generate rubrics (which we then polish, to create the exact framework we need), and as a proofreader for permission notes and emails.

Mrs Kylie Cooley
Head of Science

How fortunate we are to be surrounded by such diversity of thinking, innovation and deeply considered approaches to this new technology. As Mr England says in the Cracking the AI Code podcast linked to earlier, there is no best practise for AI in education right now – we are the experiment, and therefore a great deal of wisdom is required to navigate this journey safely and wisely.

We have copious amounts of wisdom thanks to our brilliant Board, leadership team and academic staff, and our inherent values of care, courage, integrity, respect and responsibility will continue to guide us in the right direction, ethically and morally, as we explore the potential of AI. We also have incredible student learners who are passionate about harnessing the power of technology to activate human potential, enable connections and make the world a better place for all.

This is an exciting time for our students and staff as we pioneer new frontiers in learning, together.

#WatchUsChangeTheWorld.