“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 November 2025
It is with great sadness that we share the news of Mr Marsden Carr Hordern’s OAM, VRD, DLitt (Hon) (OKG39) passing. Aged 103, Marsden passed away in Sydney on 17 October 2025. Marsden – student 329 – was Knox Grammar School’s oldest known living Old Boy.
20 November 2025
Our Prep and Senior School students achieved outstanding results at the NSW VEX IQ State Championships on Sunday 9 November.
19 November 2025
Established by our Middle Academy, Knox’s Global Challenge program gives students the opportunity to address a major world issue.
