Nestled in Melbourne’s leafy Toorak, Loreto Mandeville Hall Toorak has a presence that feels both grounded and quietly ambitious. It’s not just about impressive student outcomes (though those are there), it’s about the kind of young women the school helps shape along the way.
Indeed, there’s a clear thread running through all aspects of life at the school. Kindness, courage, and a sense of responsibility to others. In the classroom, students are pushed to think for themselves and speak with confidence. Outside it, they’re encouraged to get involved, take the lead, and give things a go. By the time they graduate, they tend to leave with more than results. They leave knowing who they are.
That sense of purpose carries through to how the school approaches digital learning, which isn’t treated as a shiny add-on but carefully woven into how the school thinks about teaching, learning and day-to-day operations.
Heading up this initiative is Robert Flavell, Director of Digital Transformation, who has more than 25 years’ experience across education and systems thinking. Flavell’s focus is less on the tools themselves and more on what sits behind them – streamlined systems, smarter processes, and removing the administrative noise so teachers can teach and students can focus on learning.
Below, The Educator speaks to Flavell about how schools can get digital transformation right, from aligning vision and systems, to embedding AI with intent, and how Loreto Toorak is using data and technology to deliver more consistent, personalised learning.
TE: Drawing from your 25 years’ experience combining education and systems thinking principles to achieve innovative outcomes, what is the most important thing school leaders should consider before embarking on digital transformation?
The most important thing is genuine organisational alignment. If your board, leadership team, IT staff and teachers aren’t working from the same vision, you end up making inconsistent decisions and accumulating complexity.
At Loreto Toorak, we established that foundation by developing a clear set of vision and guiding principles which were reviewed and interrogated by every key stakeholder group. Of the 8 principles, three of the most impactful are security by design; simplifying and consolidating our technology environment; and aligning processes with off-the-shelf solutions rather than building custom workarounds that break every time a platform updates.
The other thing I see too often is schools failing to resource technology projects with the same seriousness they apply to other major investments. At Loreto Toorak, we’ve been fortunate to have the genuine support and resourcing to approach digital transformation with a considered plan and foundation that has made lasting change possible.
TE: What stands out as the most transformative aspects of technology integration at Loreto Mandeville Hall Toorak?
The most transformative things we’ve done are probably not what people expect. The work that has genuinely moved the needle is quieter than that.
Every classroom at Loreto Toorak now has the same quality, standardised equipment, ensuring that when a teacher moves between rooms, their experience is consistent and no time is lost figuring out unfamiliar gear. We’ve recently upgraded our AARNet internet connection with a direct on-ramp to the Microsoft ecosystem, and other core systems the school uses, meaning tools like OneNote synchronise seamlessly. We’ve also transitioned to a fully school-owned and managed device program from Preparatory through to Year 12, with a hot swap model at the help desk so students are never without a working device for any length of time.
We also place significant emphasis on pen-based learning alongside our devices, because speed isn’t always the goal. Engaging deeply with a concept, annotating, writing; that’s where the thinking happens and that’s what we want to protect.
The introduction of 3D printing and laser cutting has also been genuinely valuable for creative students across art, construction and design. We focus on what works at scale and what gives every student at Loreto Toorak a consistent, high-quality learning experience.
TE: How is Loreto Mandeville Hall Toorak leveraging AI for impact in its classrooms in 2026?
Loreto Toorak’s approach to AI has been deliberate from the beginning. At the start of 2024, we engaged Dr Leon Furze, a leading global expert on AI use in K-12 education, to help us think carefully about adoption rather than simply react to it.
Our core AI platform is Microsoft Copilot. As a full Microsoft environment, all data remains within Loreto Toorak’s own tenancy. That matters deeply to us, given that security by design underpins everything we do. For teaching and learning, we use the AI assessment scale developed by Dr Furze, ranging from no AI through to full AI use and exploration. This gives teachers a shared language for designing tasks with genuine intention. A strong example is senior students using AI to convert their own summarised notes into audio for review. That works precisely because the student has done the intellectual work first. Senior English staff who piloted this last year reported meaningfully positive outcomes.
Rather than a standalone AI policy, we’ve integrated AI guidance into our existing academic integrity policies. Our approach is built around ethics, not specific tools that will inevitably change.
TE: Are there specific programs in the works for the year ahead that will be building on the great work the school is doing?
The initiative I’m most excited about sits at the intersection of data consolidation and AI, which we look forward to sharing with staff at the start of next term.
Like many schools, Loreto Toorak has historically held valuable information across separate systems, such as a learning management system, a school information system for pastoral and attendance data and a co-curricular management tool. Each holds a meaningful piece of a student’s story, but those pieces don’t currently come together in one place. What we are building is a data warehouse that consolidates that information into a single, unified view, providing teachers with a holistic dashboard that surfaces academic performance, attendance, co-curricular involvement and pastoral considerations together.
This is where AI becomes genuinely powerful as a support tool that can enhance the professional judgement of an educator, where adjustments that support individual students can be made more proactively. It is ultimately about supporting what Loreto Toorak already does exceptionally well, which is building genuine relationships with students and understanding each young woman as an individual.