Brisbane Catholic Education boosts agency and efficiency with Microsoft 365 Copilot

In the heart of Queensland, Brisbane Catholic Education (BCE) provides inclusive, faith-filled learning for more than 146 Catholic schools across a vast and diverse region. With its mission to teach, challenge, and transform, BCE is dedicated to overcoming a range of challenges as they arise. By addressing rising administrative tasks and compliance demands, BCE is working to boost educator morale and decrease workload. At the same time, BCE is actively evolving its learning models to best engage digital-native students.  

AI seemed like a natural solution to address many of these issues. So, BCE initiated a bold, system-wide rollout of Microsoft 365 Copilot for educators and staff and joined a separate Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat 13+ preview for students. More than a tech upgrade, this movement toward AI-assisted teaching and learning has become a cultural shift—anchored in a vision of equity at scale. 

“The real promise of Copilot Chat isn’t efficiency—it’s cognition,” says Shane Tooley, Assistant Principal Curriculum at St. Peter Claver College, a BCE school serving 1,200 students drawn from over 40 feeder schools. “We’re not using AI to shortcut learning. Quite the opposite. It’s helping us push students beyond knowledge recall into evaluation, synthesis, and justification. The students aren’t just asking for answers. They’re asking Copilot Chat better questions, and that’s a major shift. It lets students spend less time hunting for sources and more time thinking about what they mean. That’s where the learning really happens.” 

A pilot with purpose   

At the time of their rollout, BCE's Microsoft 365 Copilot launch was the largest in K–12 education—bringing generative AI to 12,500 educators and staff. The time saved on tasks like admin, research, and lesson planning addresses a critical need in Australia's education sector, where recent research indicates that nearly half of educators (46.8%) were considering leaving the profession within a year due to stress-related burnout and declining mental wellbeing. 

For staff, Copilot was deployed with a focus on responsible integration, hands-on training, and peer collaboration, resulting in reduced administrative load and a shift toward more responsive, student-centered teaching practices. 

Professional development was intentionally embedded within existing routines, ensuring that learning about AI was a natural extension of educators’ day-to-day practice. Through just-in-time learning opportunities—including micro-sessions, collaborative co-planning, and in-class coaching—educators built AI literacy in context.  

“Before giving [educators] Microsoft 365 Copilot, we looked at how much time they were spending on admin tasks, entering emails, developing curriculum content, and providing assessment feedback,” BCE CIO Leigh Williams explains. “It was a great opportunity to understand and address their fears and concerns. Copilot is a great tool to be able to say, 'you've got more time to support students, the reason you actually came into teaching to do.' After all, no one gets into teaching to do admin tasks!” 

 Staff members began their AI journeys with foundational training in responsible AI use, with each school identifying an “AI Captain,” a trained educator who served as a peer mentor and community builder. Confidence grew through hands-on, simulation-based professional development that allowed educators to explore Copilot in a low-risk setting. 

Bridging gaps to empower every student 

BCE also enabled students aged 13 and up to access Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat through a preview, empowering them to use AI for brainstorming, refining ideas, and building confidence in their learning. Students began to view Copilot Chat as a personal learning companion—one that supports their thinking, rather than doing the work for them.  

“We created clear expectations for how AI could be used in assessment and learning,” says St. Peter Claver College Principal Bruce McPhee. “That clarity has helped build trust with students, staff, and parents. The message is: yes, you can use AI—but here’s how to use it well. If you’re worried AI will replace assessment, remember, you control when the laptops are open. You control when it’s a tool and when it’s not. AI doesn’t replace the teacher—it expands the possibilities for learning.” 

Maximizing student potential 

Students used Copilot Chat to brainstorm, iterate, and build confidence—especially those with learning differences or social-emotional needs. In fact, data utilizing the University of Melbourne’s New Metrics for Success project showed a 275% increase in learner agency for at-risk cohorts. Copilot Chat enabled more sophisticated synthesis and project-based work, with students actively engaged in rewriting texts and forming nuanced arguments with AI support. 

Under Principal Allison Elcoate and academic leader Michael Parker, Trinity College viewed Copilot Chat as a catalyst for learner empowerment. 

“Before Copilot Chat, students were often passive participants in their education,” says Elcoate. “Now, they’re using AI to unpack achievement standards, generate project ideas, and assess their own progress. They’re becoming learners, not just receivers of knowledge. That’s the shift we’ve been trying to make for years—and Copilot Chat has accelerated it.” 

Parker typically began each school year with his lessons and resources planned out before meeting his students. With Copilot Chat, his students are driving their own learning. “They’re using Copilot Chat to identify curriculum standards, generate big questions, and map out their own learning journeys. My role has shifted from lesson planner to facilitator and mentor. One of the most powerful moments was watching a student ask Copilot Chat to reformat their assignment for dyslexia accessibility,” Parker shares. “That’s agency. That’s personalization. And it happened without pulling the teacher away from the rest of the class.” 

Open-ended prompts helped spark healthy debates and extended inquiry in classrooms. In one class, a Trinity educator asked an open-ended question that required students to think about their identity and values in today’s world. Students used Copilot Chat to help explore the topic more deeply. The discussion that followed was one of the richest that the teacher had seen, shifting the dynamic from silence to engaged dialogue. 

Another educator let her Spanish class co-create their own assessment task with Copilot Chat. Students helped craft the prompt, watched the task generate in real time, and each chose a unique topic—from Latin dance to architecture.  

Less time administrating, more time educating 

The staff at Trinity College—a BCE secondary school—also underwent Microsoft 365 Copilot simulation training with a focus on safe-use and student impact. School leaders used the tool to draft policy, align curriculum to national frameworks, and streamline communication, while educators used AI to unpack curriculum standards and create custom learning plans. 

Significant reductions in educator workload were noted across the BCE schools participating in the pilot, saving up to 9.5 hours per week on administrative duties and planning. Meanwhile, Copilot supported principal workflows with legislative scanning, trend analysis, and rapid curriculum mapping.  

Permission to try, power to transform

Across BCE, initial skepticism turned into excitement as even reluctant educators began asking for AI training after seeing peer success stories about student engagement in the classroom.

“Students wanted to make sure that they were the ones learning the concepts, skills, and knowledge, and that Copilot Chat was there as their own personal tutor to help them along the way, not to do all the work for them,” says Williams. "To me, our impactful use cases are what we prioritize. It’s about a student’s learning, and that's the heart of our work. It's also a way to utilize technology to enhance teaching and learning in a way that they've never had the capability or capacity to do before."

BCE’s success was built on strong leadership buy-in, aligning AI integration with broader strategic goals from the start. Transparent engagement with educators, students, and staff fostered trust and clarity. With scalability in mind, the initiative was thoughtfully designed—supported by co-design with schools to ensure AI tools were both practical and pedagogically sound. This included the preview for those aged 13 and up, which allowed learners to explore Copilot Chat in guided, age-appropriate contexts.

Moving forward, BCE will engage in ongoing measurement, tracking changes in workload and student outcomes through regular surveys, while continuing to invest in peer-led training, simulations, and responsible AI governance. Trinity College, for example, is planning on using AI tools to drive hyper-personalized learning pathways to individualize education in exciting new ways.

“We told our staff: you have permission to try, and permission to fail,” says Tooley. “That opened the door for teachers to test Microsoft 365 Copilot and Copilot Chat without fear of judgment or wasted time. And guess what? Most of the time, those experiments don’t fail—they spark new ways of thinking. It also led to a culture of prompt sharing across departments. A teacher in one subject might try something with Copilot, and it spreads. If you’re on the fence about AI, it comes down to this: Your students will surprise you. Given the chance, they’ll use AI ethically and meaningfully. The key is to guide them—not restrict them. Show them what good use looks like.”