MLC School becomes first Australian school to deploy Security Copilot

MLC School in Sydney’s inner west is an independent school for girls from Kindergarten to Year 12 that has been educating young women since 1886. From just 12 students to around 1,400 today, it has a long history of ensuring girls receive the same level of education as boys.

True to its motto "Ut filiae lucis ambulate" (walk as daughters of the light), MLC School continues to lead in innovation. It was the first school in Australia to deploy Microsoft Security Copilot and the first private school in New South Wales to fully implement Microsoft 365 Copilot across all departments. The school stands out for its comprehensive AI adoption and security-first approach, creating a strong foundation for cross-curricular AI use in teaching, learning, and administration.

“We always like to stay a little bit ahead of the pack,” says Head of IT, Steven Swarts.

Evolving systems while strengthening governance

Before embarking on their AI journey, MLC School faced several interconnected challenges. Firstly, the school aimed to reduce the growing volume of administrative tasks faced by teachers.

"My favourite place is in the classroom in front of the kids, not sitting at a desk doing emails," says English teacher David O'Donohue. "So, anything that minimizes that admin work means I can plan cool, interesting stuff for the kids to do."

For Eddie Park, a Year 4 teacher, the challenge was in providing differentiated instruction for diverse learners. "I have the pleasure of teaching a gifted and talented visually impaired student this year," he explains. “And AI has been so powerful in translating lesson content and resources into accessible materials in only a matter of seconds rather than minutes and hours. It gave me the ambition, flexibility, and confidence that it won’t take me three hours to translate a resource into an accessible document for this child, so I'm not limited by the choices that I had.”

MLC School also had to manage the challenge of introducing new technology to staff with varying technical skills, leveraging that technology to provide meaningful insights into student academic progress, and—above all—do all of this while ensuring robust security and governance for sensitive data.

“Governance is the biggest encumbrance [for many institutions],” says Swarts. “There's a fear of how secure data is. Where your IP is kept is a very critical component for all schools in Australia. We are strictly governed by that.” 

A strategic partnership for success

MLC School's AI adoption began thoughtfully, over a year before their full deployment. The school formed an AI Task Force to ensure a collection of diverse perspectives to help guide their approach. “It was a compilation of administrative and academic people across the business, across different sectors,” says Swarts. “They gave us a really good range of insights across the different areas of how AI is going to work for everybody.”

The choice of a Microsoft ecosystem wasn't immediate. The school initially piloted several AI tools, giving staff three months to experiment freely. However, the Microsoft integrated approach ultimately proved decisive for several critical reasons.

The school had already made a significant investment in Microsoft 365 well before AI entered the conversation—migrating to SharePoint, embracing Azure, and moving fully to the cloud. When the AI Task Force evaluated options, that existing foundation proved decisive. "We looked at third-party tools and thought, how do we govern that alongside everything else we do?" says Swarts. "Copilot was already part of our ecosystem. It was almost a no-brainer.”

Turning strong security into classroom confidence

This institution became the first school in Australia to implement Microsoft Security Copilot, equipping its IT team with advanced investigation and reporting capabilities that reduce response times without a dedicated security specialist.

“I was very tight on the governance side of things, especially knowing that we were going to ultimately release [Copilot Chat] to our students, and I don't have a dedicated security person in-house,” Swarts says. “Our IT team shares the security workload, supported by Microsoft Unified Support. Security Copilot has become our force multiplier—it advises us, walks us through incidents, and elevates what the team can deliver.

The school also relies on Microsoft Purview, Defender, Sentinel, and SharePoint Advanced Management to provide the security and governance assurances the AI Task Force required.

"We've already had an incident that was mitigated, solved, sorted, reported, and closed up by Security Copilot,” says Swarts. “I've done a hundred of these in my lifetime. Before, you walk in and immediately know your day is gone. You can pretty much count on half your day disappearing whilst you troll through logs.” With Security Copilot, resolution took about thirty minutes for this incident. “Quite literally, within half an hour I was back up and running. Things were closed up. I had a report out which I loved because Security Copilot does this fancy report out and I sent the report to my exec team going, ‘Here you go. Issue taken care of!’”

Rather than restricting innovation, robust governance has created the clarity and safety needed for teachers to experiment confidently with AI.

“The school’s AI approval processes, platform fact sheets, and academic-integrity additions give staff a clear framework for what is safe, appropriate, and supported, removing uncertainty and hesitation,” says Marianna Carlino, Director of eLearning. “In practice, the clearer the guardrails, the more willing teachers are to try new tools, refine workflows, and push creative uses of AI in their pedagogy. 

Confident expansion throughout the school

Rather than treating technology as an add-on or isolated initiative, the school has integrated AI capabilities into everyday learning. It supports everything from junior school differentiated learning to senior literature analysis, and from administrative efficiency to emerging data analytics.  

“I can do a class set of reports for about 25 kids in 45 minutes now,” says O'Donohue. “And that would have taken at least double—if not more—to do that before.” O'Donohue also created “Friar Lawrence,” an AI agent that speaks in Elizabethan English to help students grapple with Shakespearean projects such as analyzing Romeo and Juliet, enabling more complex homework assignments with appropriate scaffolding.

Meanwhile, Park describes how Copilot has transformed his lesson planning. “It's just come down to what kind of prompts or what kind of ideas must I utilize to then get the design that I'm wanting, and it’s just about tweaking that process now,” he explains. “I'm no longer a content factory where I'm sitting behind my desk and producing hours of work. I feel more like a strategist now.”

Following targeted professional development, MLC School saw what Park reported as a “200% increase in Copilot usage.” The comprehensive training approach, which included leveraging Microsoft funding for flexible online professional learning via Teams, helped even reluctant staff embrace the new technology.

“One clear change is the growing confidence teachers show in experimenting with AI-supported workflows after structured upskilling through the AI Task Force and Professional Learning sessions,” says Carlino. “A strong example comes from case-study presentations, where staff who were initially hesitant about using Copilot became enthusiastic after seeing how it could automate planning and reduce admin by hours each week.”  

Swarts' own ROI analysis showed significant returns primarily in teacher time, which was “the big driver for the Board’s approval for the investment in AI!”

The school is also exploring advanced data analytics through Microsoft Fabric, laying the groundwork for richer insights into student progress as the platform matures.

Moving forward with secure innovation

Beyond Friar Lawrence for English literature, MLC School is looking to develop more subject-specific AI agents, including agents for geography homework help and other specialised academic support. With Microsoft’s recent policy change enabling Copilot Chat use for students aged 13 and above, the school is planning to introduce these tools to enhance student learning directly.

"What excites me most about the next phase of AI integration at MLC School is that students will finally have safe, school-managed access to tools like Copilot Chat, allowing them to move from being passive recipients of AI to intentional, critical users of it," says Carlino. "With protected 13+ student environments now available within the school's tenant, we hope to allow students in the near future to explore AI for idea-generation, feedback, and clarification without compromising safety, privacy, or integrity.

At the same time, the school's student policy makes clear that AI must support thinking, not replace it,” Carlino adds. “Students are required to use AI in ways that deepen understanding rather than bypass cognitive effort. In a post-AI world, the balance comes from designing learning where AI is a tool and students remain the thinkers—using AI to extend their analysis, creativity, and problem-solving while still being held accountable for independent reasoning."

That forward-thinking mindset extends beyond student access to how educators themselves are rethinking curriculum. “Let’s assume that AI is everywhere, and that AI is integrated into everything,” O'Donohue says. "So, then what is it that we as teachers need to do? How do we need to change our curriculum to teach kids in a post-AI world?” According to O’Donohue, “Copilot should be there to empower students and teachers in their educational journey. It’s the wind beneath your wings. It shifts the challenges away from processing data—such as simply learning content—to engaging deeply with the philosophical implications of the content.”

MLC School is also in the process of implementing Fabric's advanced data analytics capabilities, further strengthening its commitment to purposeful technology integration that empowers teachers and enhances learning outcomes.

Building on success

In addition to security and governance, the leaders at MLC School stress the importance of creating dedicated time to successfully adopt AI tools rather than adding AI training as yet another task to already full schedules. O’Donohue advises other schools to consider dedicating three staff meetings per term as “sandbox sessions” where operational discussions are set aside in favor of collaborative AI exploration. When educators have protected time to experiment, fail safely, and discover possibilities together, AI transforms from an imposed burden into an empowering tool they can genuinely embrace.

This collaborative approach revealed varying levels of AI readiness among staff, prompting the school to establish help-desk structures, designate internal champions, and develop accessible training materials.

“As a result, the rollout adapted smoothly across departments with differing pedagogical and technical needs,” says Carlino. “Overall, collaboration ensured an implementation that was inclusive, scalable, and responsive.”

Similarly, O’Donohue says that the professional learning team model, where educators share successes and challenges, proved far more effective than external expert presentations. “Teachers teaching teachers is probably the most effective way because we trust each other,” he explains. “Then teachers can use Copilot on familiar units first, so that you're getting a sense of what it can do and what it can't do and then use their own expertise to see those gaps.”

The school's success—from halving the time required for report writing to novel approaches in differentiated learning—proves that when security enables rather than constrains, educational institutions can achieve remarkable transformations that benefit educators, students, and the entire school community. By establishing robust security through Security Copilot and comprehensive governance frameworks, MLC School embraces AI's transformative potential with both confidence and creativity, recognizing that you can only truly innovate at the speed of security.

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