While many organisations, including schools, are debating how to approach the complex and pressing issue of generative AI, Haileybury has forged ahead and developed an internal AI time-saving solution that supports staff and prevents confidential and sensitive information from being exposed to external platforms.
The school holds numerous policy documents ranging from duty of care and wellbeing to privacy and compliance. These are frequently reviewed and updated to meet regulatory standards, best practice and the school’s expectations. For teachers and corporate services, staying on top of those policies and procedures and finding the information they need, when they need it, adds complexity to an already busy day.
Now that information search takes seconds.
Enter Hailey, Haileybury’s custom chatbot that can rapidly search the school’s policy and procedure documents and, in an instant, provide staff with an answer to their question and a link to the relevant policy document.
“We wanted to find a way to save teachers time, while ensuring they are always across important and relevant policies,” says Faizul Zakaria, Haileybury’s Director of ICT.
“We also wanted to make things easier for the staff who work within the school’s various corporate services departments who are often the ones having to answer these policy-related questions.”
“Hailey simply began with the idea of streamlining the process of combing through multiple policies and procedures to save our staff time. It cuts back the amount of time staff are spending on administrative and routine tasks.”
Introducing Haileybury's personal chatbot
Since that initial concept, Hailey has evolved to incorporate HaileyGPT – Haileybury’s very own alternative to the ChatGPT chatbot. The design ensures the school’s private and sensitive information remains exclusively within Haileybury, and can’t be accessed by ChatGPT.
“We know ChatGPT uses data that is entered into the chatbot to help train other large language models. We didn’t want staff to upload sensitive information into public AI tools like ChatGPT, so we developed the Hailey chatbot. Staff can now enter information on that chatbot, safe in the knowledge that the information will stay within a secure perimeter,” explains Faizul.
It’s a proactive step and Faziul believes Haileybury is one of the first schools in the country to create its own chatbot.
Nurturing a technology ecosystem
The Digital Learning Team has been the human interface between AI and the teaching staff. Dominika Kapustka, Digital Learning Leader for the Middle School at Haileybury’s four Melbourne campuses, designed an AI Mastery series to bring academic and corporate services staff across Melbourne, Haileybury Rendall School in Darwin and Haileybury Pangea, up to speed with how to best use AI in an education setting.
Dominika has taught teachers and corporate services staff how to navigate HaileyGPT, emphasising the importance of writing strong and clear prompts, checking outputs from the chatbot and always using the chatbot responsibly.
“Haileybury has acknowledged that AI is here to stay. We’ve prioritised empowering educators to confidently, critically and responsibly use generative AI to streamline tasks, personalise learning and enhance lessons,” she says.
“We want our technology ecosystem to be rigorous and to use the tools we have in innovative and advanced ways. Hailey does that.”
Hailey comes of age
For Faizul, the evolution of Hailey has been a fascinating and, at times, challenging process. He compares the early versions as having the maturity of a three-year-old!
“Then it grew up and now Hailey is more like a 40-year-old! It has definitely matured,” he laughs.
As staff have become more familiar and confident with Hailey, and have realised how much time it can save, he’s been presented with a ‘laundry list’ of tasks that staff would like added to Hailey’s repertoire.
However, the next goal is to develop a Hailey version that will be a study assistant to students.
“Our role is to anticipate emerging trends and to apply them in ways that help students and staff to achieve the outcomes they want through their use of technology,” he says.
“With the advent and growth of Hailey, I think we are doing that well.”
