What if your school’s documents, like frequently asked questions or those explaining student pathway choices, could talk back? At British School Muscat, they do.

Like many good ideas in schools, the concept, design and implementation of a chatbot came about owing to a need: staff, students and parents asking questions and wanting a response in a timely manner.

Of course, as a busy British curriculum international school serving a large, diverse community, we have plenty of documents, policies and information covering most of the questions we know people have.

Yet we also know how often people overlook key information, want reassurance that they have understood something correctly, or simply prefer the idea of talking to a person.

Faster, accurate responses

This puts pressure on leaders who have to spend time answering questions, often after hours, creating more work for them and a bottleneck of information for those awaiting responses.

What if we could free up time without compromising information or that vital sense of connection with the school community? I saw an opportunity to use AI - specifically, the paid version of ChatGPT - to build a simple school chatbot.

Let me be clear: I’m definitely not a coder - but that’s the beauty of it: the process was quick and surprisingly straightforward, and the AI walks you through it.

How it works

First, I gathered our content - policies, FAQs, key documents and so on (ideally as PDFs) and then uploaded them to ChatGPT via its GPTs tool.

From there it was a matter of uploading, prompting, iterating, testing and even having fun challenging the AI to respond better each time.

Within a couple of hours, our first chatbot was live - hosted on ChatGPT and accessed easily via a link or QR code. In fact, it proved so easy that one chatbot quickly turned into three:

• For parents: built using our readily available school documents and policies, I called it the BSM Senior Guide. It provides parents with instant, reliable responses about our senior school timings, policies, point of contact and more.
   
• For students (and parents): with families and students from around the world, the British options system can be quite confusing at first. So this chatbot, using our options documents, integrates our choices and pathways to help students understand their options. 
   
• For staff: this helps colleagues articulate and formulate goals at the start of the year. The chatbot was built on our school development plan (SDP), key dates, policies, learning and teaching approach and our coaching philosophy.

Dynamic resources

Most importantly, none of the above required anything new. I trained each chatbot using the documents we already had and publicly shared: FAQs, curriculum guides, slides from options events, vision statements, values and SDP.

The difference? These documents moved from being static resources into dynamic, conversational tools, available 24/7 and with instant responses. What’s more, the responses could be converted into other languages - really useful for our whole community.

Quickly, three things changed:

Time: students, parents and colleagues got instant help at a time suitable for them. That time is reinvested in what matters most: learning, teaching, thinking ahead.

Confidence: the chatbots encouraged people to be curious with AI. Colleagues started to think differently about how to use AI or build a chatbot suitable for their context.

Consistency: after a few iterations and some training, the chatbots began to offer everyone the same answer(s).

A learning curve

Are they perfect? Absolutely not. Occasionally, they misunderstand or make things up; they need training and, at times, retraining. I also add a disclaimer to each chatbot about its accuracy and that it is in a trial phase.

We still have some marketing to do both internally and externally to encourage and embed usage.

However, like anything new in schools, it is about consistency, curiosity and the willingness to iterate. Our chatbots are currently in version 1.0 - what could they achieve by version 3.0? These tools did not replace people; they freed them up and removed friction.

A new era

Looking ahead, we are only just scratching the surface. With tools such as Google Gemini and NotebookLM alongside AI agents that can act as assistants, the technology available to us as school leaders is moving at an astonishing pace.

Could these tools support a student in understanding their option subject, iterate a weekly study schedule, highlight key people to learn from and shape their experience to be curious beyond the curriculum? We are not there yet - but how long before this vision becomes a reality?

Our chatbots are live. They are not perfect, but they are working and they are helping people. If you are curious, try building one. If you are unsure how or want to know more, ask AI or reach out and connect with me. It’s good to talk.

Dan Comber is deputy head teacher at the British School Muscat in Oman

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