Who this page is for
Principals, deputy principals, Heads of Department and curriculum leaders. Regional offices and Departments of Education. Anyone holding a timetable, a relief budget and a curriculum obligation around AI at the same time.
Everything on this page is a commercial arrangement, not a free resource. The free things ParkSyde makes are on the other page, and they stay free.
The bind
Students already use AI. The curriculum already expects it. Teachers are stretched, AI expertise is rare, and relief days too often become filler rather than learning. Every one of those is true at once, which is why the usual answers — a PD day, a subscription, a keen teacher — solve one and leave the rest.
What it is
A ready-to-run ten-week program. Weekly two-hour sessions, ending in a showcase where every student stands up and presents something they built themselves.
Two weeks on why, two on what, two on how, three on building, and the tenth week is the showcase — the same understand → apply → create arc as the UNESCO AI Competency Framework for Students.
- The spine
- Eight ParkSyde AI Competencies, mapped to the Australian Core Skills Framework and the Digital Literacy Skills Framework, with three evidence levels — Developing, Capable, Confident. Written to QCE-aligned (ACSF Level 3) reading standards.
- What arrives
- Thirty-three resources sharing one design: scope and sequence, lesson plans, build step sheets, a facilitator guide, printed and digital workbooks, a self-paced course, a competence tracker, exemplar and inspiration galleries, curriculum mapping with tasks and marking guides, and the certification pack.
- The wedge
- A lesson runner. The teacher — including a reliever who has never met the class — opens the week, presses start, and reads the scripted opening aloud. Students then self-drive through the course and workbook while the adult circulates with the “what to look for” prompts. Zero prep.
- Why it is not babysitting
- It runs on the manual-arts model — hands-on, functional, with a clear instruction manual — and on four teaching methods with a real evidence base: project-based learning, Universal Design for Learning, formative assessment with exemplars, and authentic assessment. The effect sizes and their citations are set out in full in the Research Rationale that comes with the pack. They are findings about those methods. They are not claims about what ParkSyde has measured, because ParkSyde has not measured this yet and says so on its evidence page.
What it costs
$4,500 for one class, one ten-week term, up to about thirty students — roughly $150 per student for the whole term. Prices are shown ex GST; add GST as applicable to the purchasing entity.
The honest way to value it is against what you already pay to cover teacher time. We build the case on $450 a day, which is deliberately at the conservative end — the NSW minimum casual daily rate was $452.85 as at 9 October 2025, the ACT higher tier runs to $558, and across 2026 the national range sits between about $407 and $602.71, the top being Catholic Education Western Australia’s flat rate effective January 2026. On the conservative anchor, a class licence is worth about ten relief days.
Two things make that anchor more conservative than it looks. Every figure above is what the teacher is paid. What a school pays is higher: employer superannuation is 11.5% in 2026 and sits on top of all of it, payroll tax applies in some states, and a booking made through an agency costs more than the same teacher booked direct. Work from what your own relief actually costs you and the break-even lands under nine days rather than ten — a dearer relief day means the program has to free fewer of them to pay for itself, not more.
And the honesty note that belongs with all of it: this is a value comparison, not a promise that the program replaces paid relief days one for one. An adult must always supervise. The claim is that the teacher time this creates or covers is worth, conservatively, more than the price — and you should model your own relief usage rather than take ours.
Optional, if you want them
- Facilitator onboarding — half day
- $1,200
- Printed workbook packs — class set of thirty
- $450
- Custom outcomes report for a Department pilot
- $2,500
- Multi-year licence — three years, whole school
- $45,000, which is $9,000 less than three single years
Which budget line it sits on
Curriculum and teaching resources; digital and ICT learning; professional learning and relief; equity and inclusion funding; STEM and innovation grants. It acquits cleanly on any of them, because it produces things you can point at: a finished product per learner, competency records and A–D grades against Australian Curriculum v9.0 achievement standards, an attendance and engagement record, and a showcase the community can come to.
The credential, precisely
Students who finish earn the ParkSyde Certificate of Competence — earned against criteria, not issued for attendance. It is not an accredited VET qualification, and it must never be described as one.
Both halves of that are load-bearing. The certificate is issued only to students who reach the competencies and present a finished piece of work — there is a bar, and a student can miss it. The eight competencies behind it are mapped to the Australian Core Skills Framework and the Digital Literacy Skills Framework, the same national frameworks accredited training maps to, with evidence recorded at three levels. What the credential lacks is registration, not substance: only a Registered Training Organisation can issue nationally recognised qualifications, units of competency or statements of attainment, and ParkSyde is not one. The workbooks are written to QCE-aligned reading standards but do not by themselves grant QCE literacy credit.
There are two routes and we would rather sequence them honestly than blur them. License now — available immediately, ParkSyde’s own credential, best for getting started this term. Accreditation later — over time, through ASQA registration, for a nationally recognised qualification. Run the first to generate outcomes and evidence, and use that evidence to pursue the second. We will not market an accredited qualification before the registration exists.
How to start
Run a pilot. One term, a few classes across mixed year levels.
We measure learning, engagement, teacher time freed and curriculum evidence, and hand you an outcomes report you can take to your own decision-makers. The pedagogy has an evidence base already; what a pilot proves is the fit in your setting, with your students and your staff. The risk is one term.
Or ring 0467 937 659. A real person answers and can send you the full proposal, the research rationale, the curriculum mapping and the data-privacy and safe-AI-use policy.