“We were motivated to invent a tool that would help the community and society, by making an application not just for us students,” said Daniel (Year 11). “From what I’ve observed, our Student Administration Officer takes a lot of phone calls about student absence, and she could have more time to be focused on more meaningful tasks.”
In collaboration with Patrick Chye (AI Co-Curricular Director), students developed an Artificial Intelligence Digital Assistant Phone Answering Service for parents or carers to report their son being absent from school.
The Service allows unique and dedicated responses to be fed back to the caller using natural language processing and responses with multilingual capabilities. It’s designed to take 20 concurrent phone calls at once with a calming tone of voice. The project’s intention is to focus on the wellbeing of students, parents, and staff, by developing a tool that can alleviate stress and ensure better time management.
The project was developed by Patrick and a team of students including Daniel, Dominic (Year 9) and Joshua (Year 9), and was later pitched to Dr Andrew Weeding (Deputy Headmaster K-12 and Head of Senior School), Kate Lee (Head of Digital Learning, Senior School) and Chuck Ardron (Director of Co-Curricular Operations, Senior School).
The AI Digital Assistant makes it easier for parents to call in and swiftly connect and converse in their language of choice – currently including various dialects such as Arabic and Hindu, Mandarin, Vietnamese, Japanese, French and English.
From an administrative perspective, the AI Assistant can report and record student absences, collect medical certificates, and present data via a reporting and analysis dashboard back to stakeholders at the school. Without this tool, these operational tasks would be less time effective.
24 April 2026
On Wednesday 25 March, Knox competed in the Local Heat of the Interschool Chess Challenge at Ku-Ring-Gai Town Hall in Pymble and came away in First Place.
22 April 2026
Blake Roder (OKG23) and Henry Pearce (OKG25) are Knox graduates currently studying at the National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA).
17 April 2026
In Term 1, our Year 6 students at Knox Prep transported audiences from the Wenkart Theatre into the magical world of ‘Seussical Jr.’, the fantastical musical about love and mateship.
