A Purposeful Partnership
Haileybury, Australia’s largest independent school and the nation’s leading co-educational school, partnered with Antares to design and deploy QBot as Hailey — a secure, Enterprise AI platform embedded within its own environment. Built on the QBot platform and tailored to Haileybury’s context, Hailey enables the school to streamline operations, support staff and students, and innovate safely with AI while retaining full ownership and control of its data.
The objective was clear: harness AI to reduce administrative burden, improve access to policies, strengthen curriculum differentiation, and enhance staff capability — all without compromising privacy, governance, or trust.
Starting with a tightly governed policy assistant and expanding into a full secure AI environment, Hailey has become a trusted digital assistant, supporting both academic and corporate services teams.
“Our ambition always comes back to our Magenta Principles, and embracing AI leads us to have more engaged staff who have greater capacity to deliver better outcomes for our students.”
— Anna Sever, Deputy Principal — Haileybury
Innovation Embedded in DNA
Founded almost 135 years ago by an entrepreneur, Haileybury has innovation embedded in its DNA. Today it operates four campuses in Melbourne, runs Haileybury Pangea — an online school servicing Victoria and the Northern Territory — manages Haileybury Rendall School in Darwin (home to the largest Indigenous boarding house in Australia), and delivers international programs across Asia and beyond.
Despite its scale, Haileybury remains deeply values-driven. It embraces new technologies early — but only where they are safe, purposeful, and aligned to its core principle that every student and every staff member matters, every day.
For Haileybury, AI represents the next frontier — not to replace teachers, but to give them back time, clarity and capacity to focus on high-value work.
Harness AI Without Compromising Safety, Governance or Staff Workload
As generative AI tools entered the mainstream, Haileybury recognised both the opportunity and the risk. Leadership knew AI could significantly reduce workload and unlock new approaches to teaching — but only if it could be implemented safely and responsibly.
A large, complex and highly regulated policy environment
Manual searching across multiple PDF and intranet sources
Privacy concerns around student and staff data in public AI tools
Uncertainty around where data is processed and stored
Growing administrative burden on teachers
Varying levels of AI literacy across staff
The need to build community trust with students and parents
Need for a solution capable of evolving with AI development
“When you’re a big school, one of the things that is a real pain point is the number of policies. Getting your head around all of those policies and ‘how does that apply to me’ — that is very, very hard to do in a way that is easy for people to understand and apply.”
— Michelle Dennis, Head of Digital — Haileybury
Hailey — A Secure AI Platform Built on QBot
Working in close partnership, Haileybury and Antares implemented Hailey in staged phases — beginning with a tightly confined use case before expanding into a broader AI assistant embedded within Microsoft Teams.
Hailey Policy
Turning Complex Policies into Accessible, Usable Knowledge
Hailey Policy was deployed as a secure AI interface over the school’s full policy and procedure suite. Hosted entirely within Haileybury’s Microsoft tenancy, it enables staff to ask natural language questions and receive accurate, referenced answers drawn from multiple policy documents simultaneously.
Staff query questions like “What policies apply to organising an excursion?” in plain language
Hailey provides answers with direct links back to source documents for transparency
Built trust in the system, delivered immediate productivity gains, and demonstrated secure AI
Hailey GPT
A Secure AI Assistant Inside Microsoft Teams
With trust established, Haileybury expanded to Hailey GPT — a broader large language model experience embedded directly into Microsoft Teams. Because it lives inside tools staff already use daily, there was no additional platform to learn and no workflow disruption.
Draft and refine communications; design differentiated curriculum materials
Generate scaffolded worksheets, assessments, and exam questions
Synthesise reports, meeting notes, and create accessibility alt text
Staff can safely include contextual student information within the secure tenancy
“What was important to us about Hailey was that it wasn’t going to be a new platform — it was going to sit inside the environment that our staff are already comfortable with.”
— Steven Burns, Risk and Compliance Director — Haileybury
Tangible Gains in Time, Confidence and Capability
Hailey has delivered measurable impact across Haileybury — as a daily operational tool, not a theoretical initiative. The most immediate benefit has been workload reduction, with teachers reclaiming hours previously spent on policy searches, drafting communications, and formatting resources.
Whole-of-school policy library indexed
Single AI interface replaces manual navigation of static PDFs and cross-referencing multiple policy versions.
Up to 10 hours saved per teacher / week
Tasks requiring extended after-hours effort can now be completed in minutes through structured prompts.
Secure Microsoft 365 tenancy deployment
Eliminates external data exposure risk, enabling staff to use AI with student-specific context confidently.
Faster curriculum differentiation
Rapid generation of differentiated learning materials across year levels and ability groups.
Stronger AI literacy across 150+ staff
Improved capability across academic and corporate teams, with ongoing professional learning embedded.
Accessibility improvements
Automated alt-text support and content reformatted across reading levels, improving inclusive practice.
“Looking at the way that I used to research and design my own information, it could take me two or three days to find the right source. Now I can do that in less than half an hour. Close to 10 hours a week minimum that I’m saving on creating documents, synthesising material, and research.”
— Samuel Cavnoudias, Head of Year 12 — Haileybury
A Strategic, Evolving Capability
Haileybury sees Hailey as a strategic, evolving capability — not a finished project. The next phase focuses on deepening integration, expanding practical impact, and maintaining disciplined governance.
Unified front door to institutional knowledge
Enabling seamless staff access across Canvas and other operational platforms without needing to remember where documents are stored.
Tailored AI personas for specific roles
As adoption matures, departments are identifying specialised needs. The next evolution introduces role-specific AI personas, all within a single secure platform.
Ongoing professional learning and ethical governance
Ensuring staff capability, community dialogue, and governance frameworks evolve alongside the technology.
“We wanted to work with someone where we could continually work together to make it better and adapt as our knowledge about AI changes, but also as the technology itself evolves.”
— Michelle Dennis, Head of Digital — Haileybury
Ready to explore what AI can do in your organisation?
Start with a 20-minute live demo to see QBot in action — or book a Discovery Workshop and leave with a concrete AI deployment roadmap for your organisation.
No obligation. No sales pitch. An honest conversation about what’s possible.
