Section 01

Independence and conflicts of interest.

Independence statement

Core Education Design operates independently of the NSW Department of Education. Company work is undertaken outside Departmental working time and without the use of Departmental equipment, systems or resources. Services, views and materials provided by Core Education Design do not represent the NSW Department of Education unless explicitly commissioned or authorised by the Department.

Core Education Design is founded and led by a practising school executive. That practitioner perspective is the substance of the offer, and it also creates obligations. The company is not part of, endorsed by, or acting on behalf of any education authority, and no Department endorsement is implied at any point.

Schools Core Education Design accepts

Core Education Design accepts engagements with New South Wales public schools, and with independent and non-government schools located outside New South Wales. Enquiries outside these categories are declined or referred, without exception and irrespective of the value of the work.

This is a standing rule rather than a case-by-case judgement, because a rule can be tested by a procurement officer and a judgement cannot. Within the accepted categories, actual, potential and perceived conflicts are still identified, disclosed and managed. Enquiries are screened before any proposal is issued, and disclosure is made in writing rather than raised informally. Where a conflict cannot be appropriately managed, Core Education Design will recuse itself, refer the work elsewhere, or decline it.

Employment separation

Company work is performed outside public employment hours, using company equipment, accounts and systems only. Employer information, materials and systems are not used in company work.

Vendor neutrality

Core Education Design receives no commission, referral fee or reseller margin from third-party platform vendors, and has no financial incentive to recommend one platform over another.

Declared product interests

Where Core Education Design holds a commercial interest in a product, that interest is declared in writing before the product is proposed. No engagement requires adoption of any Core Education product.

Individual relationships

Any personal relationship, prior role or decision-making interest connecting the founder to a prospective client is disclosed before a proposal is issued, and may result in the work being declined.

Section 02

Company, contracting and insurance.

Contracting entity: Zenith Creative Solutions Pty Ltd, trading as Core Education Design, unless an approved product entity or other legal arrangement is explicitly used and identified in the agreement.
ACN: 698 843 471
ABN: 72 698 843 471
GST: Zenith Creative Solutions Pty Ltd is registered for GST. GST is shown separately on all quotes, proposals and tax invoices.
Insurance: Professional Indemnity and Public Liability cover will be in place before the commencement of any client engagement. Current certificates of currency are provided in the due-diligence pack at the appropriate procurement stage, and cover is reviewed as services, software, hosting and contract values change.
Registered location: Charlestown, New South Wales, Australia
Governing law: The laws of New South Wales, Australia. The parties submit to the non-exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of New South Wales.
Procurement contact: darren@coreeducation.com.au

Substantial engagements require written terms. A Statement of Work defines the client, Architecture area, partnership model, outcomes, activities, deliverables, exclusions, responsibilities, timeline, fees, evidence, support, change control and completion criteria. The accepted proposal or contract is the scope baseline, and material changes to deliverables, scale, Architecture area, custom development, timeline or support require written variation.

Fees separate project work, licences, hosting, maintenance, support, third-party costs, travel and GST treatment. Recurring dependencies are never concealed inside a headline project fee.

Liability, warranties and limitations

No guaranteed outcomes. Core Education Design does not guarantee student outcomes, financial savings, AI accuracy, perfect security, regulatory approval or third-party platform availability.
No unlimited liability. Unlimited liability is not accepted by default. Liability, warranties and disclaimers are defined in the applicable agreement.
What is committed. Disciplined Architecture, senior practitioner judgement, defined implementation support, transparent evidence and capability transfer within the agreed scope.
What determines results. The scale of school outcomes also depends on the starting point, leadership decisions, participation, implementation quality and wider context.

The governing terms for use of this website are set out in the Terms of Service. Where the Terms of Service or an executed agreement differ from this page, those documents prevail.

Section 03

Privacy, confidentiality and data governance.

Data use must be necessary, authorised and specific to the solution being designed. De-identified, aggregated, representative or synthetic information is preferred wherever it will do the job, and most Architecture activity can be completed without identifiable student data.

Identifiable student data is not required by default. Where identifiable information is genuinely necessary, the purpose, authority, minimum data set, approved system, access, retention, deletion and incident arrangements are agreed in writing before any data is shared.

Sensitive information is not entered into AI platforms or other third-party systems without appropriate approval and controls. Client information is treated as confidential, and client identity is anonymised in all published material unless written permission for identification has been provided.

Personal information is destroyed or de-identified once it is no longer required for the purpose for which it was collected and no legal obligation requires it to be retained. How Core Education Design collects and handles personal information through this website and in the course of business is set out in the Privacy Policy, which prevails over this summary.

Section 04

Information security and its boundary.

Security is treated as a design decision rather than a general assurance. Practical controls appropriate to the risk of each engagement include strong authentication and multi-factor authentication, least-privilege access, secure storage and sharing, supported devices and time-limited access.

The boundary, stated plainly

Core Education Design may identify security risk but does not provide cybersecurity certification unless that work is separately contracted.
No platform or implementation is represented as automatically compliant, endorsed by any education authority, sovereign-hosted or continuously available merely because it has been recommended.
Privacy and security arrangements are solution-specific and confirmed in the relevant service architecture and agreement, not asserted as blanket marketing statements.
Schools remain responsible for their own security posture, system configuration, access management and risk acceptance.

Section 05

Responsible AI.

AI is introduced for defined educational purposes with appropriate oversight and review. It may amplify professional capability, but it does not displace human accountability. People retain authority for curriculum, accuracy, fairness, safety, accessibility, assessment and any decision affecting a learner.

AI applications support defined educational workflows and preserve human authority by design.
Bias, privacy, surveillance, authorship, assessment validity, overreliance, deskilling and unequal access are treated as live design considerations, not afterthoughts.
Availability of a tool does not establish approval for its use. A school's AI position, approved uses and restricted uses are documented and owned by the school.
Suitability for student use, age eligibility, account type, privacy and data handling remain decisions for the school and its system authority. Core Education Design makes no representation on a school's behalf about them.
Internally, AI may support drafting, synthesis, research, coding, knowledge retrieval and administration. It does not approve contracts, pricing, high-risk publication or consequential educational judgements.

Each Core Education Design application is governed by a product charter defining its intended use, data position, human authority, quality standards, licensing and prohibited uses. Charters are available to clients during an engagement. Instruction files, prompt logic, scoring logic and source code are not published, as they are proprietary.

Section 06

Intellectual property, ownership and licensing.

Ownership is classified before substantial work begins, so that no party has to reconstruct it later. Project material is identified in the proposal or agreement as client-owned, Core Education owned or licensed, jointly owned, third-party or open, and the ownership, licence, modification rights, confidentiality, support and permitted post-engagement use of each item are stated at that point.

School data and school-created content

Remain under school control, subject to applicable platform terms and where the delivery model permits. Core Education Design claims no ownership of a school's data or of content the school creates.

Background intellectual property

Remains with its existing owner. Core Education Design methods, frameworks and materials developed before or outside an engagement remain Core Education Design's.

Reusable Core Education material

Frameworks, templates, configurations, instructions and tutorials are provided under a licence set out in writing before work commences. The licence states the permitted scope of use, whether material may be modified, and what continues after the engagement ends.

Joint development

Where material is developed jointly, ownership, contribution, commercialisation, maintenance, confidentiality, termination and dispute arrangements are agreed in writing before substantial work begins.

Core Education Design intellectual property is developed independently of any public employer, using company time, equipment and systems. Material produced by the founder in an employed capacity is not Core Education Design property, is not licensed to clients, and is not offered for resale.

Product partnerships. Where Core Education Design contributes to a separate software product under a commercial partnership, educational authority, technical authority, commercial authority, ownership, hosting, licensing, support and roadmap are defined in the partnership agreement and governed by the relevant product entity, not by Core Education Design. Core Education Design's commercial interest in any such product is declared in writing before the product is proposed to a school, and no engagement is conditional on its adoption.

Section 07

Third-party platforms and assurance limits.

Third-party platforms remain governed by their own terms and technical arrangements. Core Education Design designs around them, advises on their fit and documents their dependencies, but does not control them and cannot warrant them.

Third-party subscriptions, usage, hosting, integrations, support and continuing post-engagement access are identified separately and made visible before any commitment. Where an existing Core Education Design application is included during an active partnership, that inclusion is expressly scoped, and continuing access after the engagement is addressed before it ends rather than after.

Core Education Design will not claim

Automatic compliance with any policy, standard or regulatory requirement.
Endorsement by the NSW Department of Education or any other education authority.
Sovereign hosting of any third-party platform.
Continuous availability or universal suitability of any platform or service.

Section 08

Client authority and scope of advice.

Core Education Design strengthens informed school agency rather than replacing local leadership. Schools retain procurement, policy, staffing, platform and risk-acceptance authority at all times. Core Education Design may advise, model and document, but does not exercise a school's statutory authority.

Clients provide executive sponsorship, access, evidence, staff time, local communication, approvals and implementation authority. Recommendations are designed to support appropriate school and system-level review, not to bypass it, and assumptions, trade-offs and dependencies are made visible so they can be tested and challenged.

Every engagement has an intentional endpoint: school ownership, limited support, advisory continuation, a separately scoped new phase, or transition to a third party. Capability transfer is designed from commencement so that implementation does not remain dependent on an external consultant.

Section 09

Collaborators and school-site requirements.

Where specialist capability is required beyond the company's own, collaborators may be engaged. Any such arrangement is identified to the client before the collaborator begins work, and the confidentiality, privacy, data-handling and intellectual-property obligations that apply to Core Education Design are extended to them in writing.

Any person engaged by Core Education Design who attends a school site or may interact with students holds a current Working With Children Check. Verification numbers are provided to the school on request before attendance, and Core Education Design will complete any additional screening, induction or site-access requirement the school or its system authority applies.

Core Education Design holds the client relationship and remains accountable for the quality of all work delivered under an engagement, including work performed by a collaborator.

Section 10

Accessibility.

Accessibility is a design requirement, not a review step. Who can access and benefit from a system, and who may be disadvantaged by device access, language, disability, independence assumptions, cost or complexity, is examined as part of design. Consistency must not become rigid uniformity.

Products, applications and material methodologies pass educational, technical, governance, accessibility, claims and commercial quality gates before release. Where a school has a defined accessibility standard or conformance requirement, that requirement is confirmed in the Statement of Work and designed to deliberately, rather than assumed.

If any Core Education Design material or website content presents an accessibility barrier, report it to darren@coreeducation.com.au. Reports are acknowledged within two business days and an accessible alternative is provided while the issue is addressed.

Section 11

Evidence, claims and case studies.

Published examples include engagements delivered by Core Education Design and practice examples drawn from the founder's professional experience in school leadership. Work undertaken in an employed capacity remains the property of the relevant school or system, is described only with appropriate permission, and is not offered for resale.

Case studies require verified evidence, permissions, anonymisation where required, stated limitations and a claims register. All examples are anonymised unless written permission for identification has been provided.

Modelling tools published by Core Education Design, including the return on investment calculators, are decision aids. They expose their inputs, formulas and limitations so leaders can replace defaults with local evidence. They are not audited savings, and Core Education Design has a commercial interest in the figures they produce. Evidence may be mapped to recognised frameworks to support a school's own evaluation, but Core Education Design does not determine formal judgements.

Section 12

Incidents and escalation.

Material privacy, security, confidentiality, safety, contractual or reputational incidents follow a defined sequence:

Identify
Contain
Preserve evidence
Assess
Notify
Remediate
Document
Review

An affected school is contacted within 48 hours of Core Education Design becoming aware of an incident affecting its data, systems or engagement. That first contact states what is known, what is not yet known and what is being done. Resolution timeframes depend on the nature and severity of the incident and are communicated as the assessment progresses rather than estimated prematurely.

Core Education Design will support a school's own assessment of its obligations under the Notifiable Data Breaches scheme, and will meet its own notification obligations under the applicable agreement, the Privacy Act 1988 and to the school's system authority. These obligations apply in addition to the sequence above, not instead of it.

Section 13

Records, complaints, disputes and termination.

Record retention

Records are retained for the periods below, or longer where a dispute, claim, audit or investigation is anticipated or on foot, in which case relevant records are preserved until the matter is finally resolved.

Record type	Retention period	Basis
Company financial records	7 years	Corporations Act 2001
Tax and GST records	7 years, exceeding the 5-year minimum	Australian Taxation Office record-keeping rules
Client contracts and project records	7 years after the engagement ends	Covers the 6-year contract limitation period, Limitation Act 1969 (NSW)
Workplace and contractor records	7 years	Fair Work Act 2009
Complaints and incident records	7 years from resolution	Company policy
Personal information not otherwise required	Destroyed or de-identified when no longer needed	Australian Privacy Principle 11.2

Complaints

Concerns are welcome at any point in an engagement and are better raised early than at closure. To raise a concern, write to darren@coreeducation.com.au with the details and the outcome sought.

Acknowledgement within 2 business days.
Substantive written response within 10 business days, or a clear explanation of why more time is needed and when a response will follow.
If unresolved, either party may refer the matter to mediation by an independent mediator agreed between them before commencing proceedings.
Records of the complaint, response and outcome are retained in accordance with the schedule above.

Termination and disputes

Agreements define completion, suspension, termination, the consequences of termination, notice requirements, the dispute pathway and transition arrangements. On completion or termination, handover, documentation, licence position and removal of access are addressed before the engagement closes. Agreements are governed by the laws of New South Wales.

Section 14

Due-diligence pack.

At the appropriate procurement stage, prospective clients can receive the full due-diligence pack: verified legal entity and registration information, GST status, current insurance evidence, the independence and conflicts statement, privacy and data position, security boundary, intellectual property and licensing principles, accessibility position, collaborator and Working With Children Check arrangements, service and support boundary, complaints and dispute process, record-retention position and procurement contacts.

Request it at darren@coreeducation.com.au, or raise it during a Discovery Call.