Understanding the ROI calculators.
A plain-language explanation of what the three calculators measure, where their evidence comes from, how each result is produced, and what the figures should and should not be used to claim.
Two economic models. Read this before anything else.
The three calculators do not all answer the same question. Two of them measure labour a school would have to fund to reach a standard it cannot currently afford. One measures time teachers already spend that could be redirected. Confusing the two is the single most common way these figures get misread.
Capacity that already exists inside the school.
Starts from hours teachers currently spend, isolates the portion consumed by sourcing and producing resources, and models how much could be streamlined and deliberately redirected. The output is bounded by the time teachers actually have.
Used by Calculator 02 only.
Work a school would otherwise have to fund.
Asks what professional labour would be consumed if the school produced curriculum resources at this standard by hand. The answer is routinely more time than any school has, because most schools do not produce material at this standard at all. The labour is unaffordable, not unwanted.
Used by Calculators 01 and 03.
Never add the results together. They measure different things in different units of meaning. A labour-replaced figure is not hours a teacher gets back, and it is not money that appears in a budget. A time-returned figure is not the cost of building a curriculum from scratch.
Which one answers your question.
Each is explained in full below. All three are editable, all three publish their formulas, and none of them requires a sign-up.
Production-equivalent value
What the resources Core Education Design architecture produces would cost in professional labour if a school built the same material by hand, to the same standard.
Read the explanationRecurring planning capacity
How much of the planning and resource-production time teachers already spend could be streamlined and redirected to higher-value work. Explained in the most detail on this page.
Read the explanationCurriculum-development comparison
A whole-curriculum reference for the labour that high-quality instructional development can require, compared against Core Education Design's stated design objective.
Read the explanationWhat the calculators are designed to show.
Together they estimate the professional capacity consumed by curriculum production, and how much of it stronger architecture, reusable workflows and customised digital tools could change.
These are not simply “time-saving calculators”. The intended change has two parts: teachers spend less time on repetitive production tasks, while the resources they create become more consistent, comprehensive and aligned with school requirements.
Teachers retain agency over curriculum decisions. Core Education Design provides the architecture that makes higher-quality local development more achievable within the time schools realistically have.
Less unnecessary production
Reduce repeated formatting, rebuilding, requirement-checking and fragmented searching.
More valuable professional work
Redirect capacity towards sequencing, instructional refinement, feedback, collaboration and adaptation for learners.
Higher achievable quality
Build agreed pedagogical, compliance, accessibility and branding expectations into normal curriculum-development workflows.
What the Australian research establishes.
The research establishes the scale of the curriculum-planning workload and the value of better-supported curriculum development. It does not measure a Core Education Design implementation, and neither organisation has evaluated Core Education Design.
Resource sourcing and creation
Grattan's 2022 survey drew responses from 2,243 Australian teachers and school leaders. It found that teachers with access to a common bank of high-quality materials save about three hours a week, because they do not have to source and create materials themselves.
This three-hour difference is used as an evidence-informed reference point for potentially addressable work. It is not entered as a guaranteed Core Education Design saving.
Read Ending the Lesson LotteryPlanning and preparation workload
AITSL reports that 40% of full-time classroom teachers spend at least ten hours each week on lesson planning and preparation. A further substantial cohort reports spending five to nine hours.
Calculator 02 uses ten hours as an editable starting point, not as an assumption that applies to every teacher or school.
Review AITSL Teacher Duties dataThe critical distinction: Grattan examined access to comprehensive shared materials. Core Education Design does not provide a standardised curriculum bank. It helps a school build its own architecture, templates, processes and customised tools so teachers can create school-specific resources more efficiently while retaining professional agency.
A second source set, used only by Calculator 03: professional instructional-development studies report development-to-instruction ratios of roughly 24:1 for adapted content and 38:1 for traditional design. Those studies were conducted in corporate and higher-education settings. They are not Australian school curriculum benchmarks, and they are used only to indicate that comprehensive development is normally highly time-intensive.
Recurring planning capacity: what each field means.
Every input is editable. Schools should replace the starting figures with locally credible assumptions wherever reliable information is available.
Teachers affected
The number of teachers expected to use the relevant Core Education Design systems, processes, templates or tools.
- Use the whole staff only for a genuine whole-school implementation.
- For a faculty pilot, enter only the participating teachers.
Teaching weeks each year
The number of weeks in which affected teachers actively plan, develop or adapt curriculum resources.
- The default is 40 weeks.
- Adjust this if the intended implementation operates over a shorter period.
Current planning hours per teacher each week
The total weekly time currently spent on lesson planning and preparation by each affected teacher.
- The ten-hour default reflects the AITSL finding for 40% of full-time classroom teachers.
- It should be changed if school-level evidence supports a different figure.
Weekly hours spent on resource sourcing and production
The part of planning time spent finding, formatting, building, checking and revising teaching resources.
- The three-hour default is informed by Grattan's observed difference.
- The calculator never allows this figure to exceed the entered total planning hours.
Estimated share of this work streamlined by CED
The percentage of sourcing and production work the school believes could be reduced through improved architecture, workflows and tools.
- The 50% default is an illustrative scenario, not a measured Core Education Design benchmark.
- Use a conservative figure when local implementation evidence is unavailable.
- Count only work the proposed solution can realistically streamline.
Inclusive hourly staff value
An indicative hourly value for the professional capacity represented by the modelled hours.
- It may include salary and employment on-costs if the school chooses.
- It is used to express the scale of capacity, not an available budget saving.
Hours in an equivalent working day
The number of hours used to translate redirected capacity into an easily understood equivalent number of working days.
- The default is 7.6 hours.
- This conversion does not imply teachers work only these hours each day.
How Calculator 02 produces its results.
The model uses straightforward multiplication. Nothing you enter is transmitted, stored or recorded.
Annual planning hours
teachers × teaching weeks × weekly planning hours
Addressable hours
teachers × teaching weeks × resource sourcing and production hours
Potential hours redirected
addressable hours × estimated share streamlined
Equivalent working days
potential hours redirected ÷ hours in an equivalent working day
Share of planning time
potential hours redirected ÷ annual planning hours × 100
Staff-capacity value
potential hours redirected × inclusive hourly staff value
Protective rule: if resource sourcing and production hours are entered above total planning hours, the calculator uses the lower total-planning figure. This prevents addressable work from being counted beyond the planning time entered.
How to read each result.
Annual planning hours modelled
The total planning and preparation time represented by all teachers in the scenario.
This establishes the size of the overall planning workload.Addressable resource-development hours
The portion of total planning time attributed to sourcing and producing resources.
It does not assume that all planning activity can or should be streamlined.Potential annual hours redirected
The addressable hours multiplied by the school's estimated streamlining effect.
These hours remain professional capacity and can be redirected to higher-value work.Equivalent working days redirected
A translation of the potential hours into an equivalent number of working days.
This makes the scale easier to understand; it is not a staffing-reduction calculation.Share of total planning time
The potential hours redirected as a percentage of all planning time in the scenario.
This helps test whether the local assumption appears proportionate or implausibly high.Equivalent staff-capacity value
The potential hours multiplied by the entered inclusive hourly staff value.
This expresses the value of capacity already being consumed. It is not cash returned to the school.Worked example using the Calculator 02 defaults
This example demonstrates the arithmetic. It is not a forecast for every school.
Production-equivalent value: why the total can exceed a teacher's working year.
Calculator 01 does not model time teachers currently spend. It models the professional labour that producing the same resources manually, to the same standard, would consume. Read that sentence twice, because everything else follows from it.
Why the number looks impossible, and is not. With one teacher and five subjects the default output exceeds a thousand hours. That is more than half a teacher's entire working year, and far more than the planning time Calculator 02 says exists. Both figures are correct, because they measure different things. Calculator 01 is asking what it would cost to buy this work, not what a teacher currently does. Most schools do not produce material to this standard at all, precisely because the labour has never been affordable. The gap is the finding.
What the hours are. Modelled traditional production times for each resource type: the labour required to create each item manually at the standard Core Education Design architecture produces. They are working assumptions drawn from professional practice, not an independent measurement study.
What the dollar figure is not. It is a replacement cost. It is not hours returned to teachers, money removed from a budget, or a reduction in salary expenditure. For time genuinely returned to existing staff, use Calculator 02.
Items per subject and per teacher
How many learning activities, performance-descriptor drafts, Core Docs and When, What, How pages the scenario covers.
- Core Docs are entered per teacher because not every subject requires a senior monitoring document.
- Everything else is entered per subject and multiplied by subjects taught.
Manual production hours per item
The modelled labour to build each item by hand at the intended standard. Shown in the table so it can be inspected rather than assumed.
- These are documented working assumptions, not measured results.
- They are the figures most worth challenging in a Discovery Call.
Curriculum-development comparison: a reference for the true cost of quality.
Calculator 03 asks what volume of development labour is implied when a school creates or adapts a defined body of curriculum material, and compares three editable development ratios across a whole curriculum. It uses the adapted-resource model as its baseline.
Where the ratios come from. The 24.33:1 and 38.33:1 figures come from professional instructional-development research conducted in corporate and higher-education settings. They indicate the substantial labour that high-quality development can require in a properly resourced environment. They are not validated benchmarks for routine Australian school curriculum production, and they should be adjusted where local evidence supports a different figure.
The 1:1 figure is a design objective, not a result. Core Education Design's stated design objective is to make the depth and consistency normally associated with high-input resource development achievable at close to a 1:1 development-to-delivery workflow. It is a design objective, not an achieved, audited or independently verified result. It is the single assumption most worth challenging in this calculator, and it is editable for exactly that reason. Ask for the underlying basis before relying on it.
Why the headline figure is large. The default compares a whole school's whole curriculum, thousands of instructional hours, across two development models. It expresses what the same labour would cost to buy at the rate entered. It is not a forecast that a school will receive that amount, remove it from staffing, or avoid every modelled hour in a single year. Most of the labour it values is work schools do not currently fund at all.
The intended gain is better curriculum, not merely faster production.
Current planning time is often a ceiling on attainable quality. Teachers use the time available, but repeated setup and production work compete with the deeper design work required for comprehensive resources.
Limited time forces compromise
Teachers may spend substantial time planning and still be unable to build every desired quality feature into each resource.
- Repeated formatting and page construction
- Manual interpretation of recurring requirements
- Inconsistent structures between faculties or courses
- Dependence on overtime and staff goodwill
Architecture supports quality at the point of creation
Reusable structures and customised tools help teachers create resources that more consistently reflect agreed priorities.
- Explicit teaching and instructional sequencing
- High potential and gifted education
- Mastery learning and assessment design
- Accessibility, consistency and school branding
What the results do, and do not, mean.
The results can be used to
- Illustrate the possible scale of a curriculum-production constraint.
- Compare conservative local implementation scenarios.
- Support discussion about where redirected capacity would create value.
- Show the labour cost of curriculum quality a school is not currently funding.
- Identify assumptions that should be tested during a pilot.
- Frame curriculum quality and workload as connected system-design issues.
The results should not be presented as
- A guaranteed outcome of engaging Core Education Design.
- Salary expenditure that can automatically be removed.
- A direct financial return, profit or cash saving.
- Evidence that Grattan or AITSL evaluated Core Education Design.
- Proof that every resource equals a fixed 24:1 or 38:1 development process.
- A single total. The three outputs must never be added together.
Three steps to a credible scenario.
Define the actual scope
Enter only the teachers, subjects and weeks that the proposed implementation will genuinely affect.
Use local evidence
Where possible, draw on staff surveys, time sampling, faculty audits or a measured pilot rather than relying only on defaults.
Test conservatively
Use a defensible streamlining percentage, record why it was chosen and compare more than one scenario before drawing conclusions.
Two things you are entitled to know.
We have an interest in these numbers
Core Education Design has a direct commercial interest in the figures these calculators produce. That is precisely why every input, ratio, formula and limitation is published and editable rather than presented as a finished result.
Treat the defaults as a starting position to be argued with. Replace them with your own workload, staffing and curriculum evidence, and judge the proposition on the scenario you can defend locally. The most useful result is the one you can take to your executive and have survive questioning.
Nothing you enter is captured
The calculators run entirely in your browser. The numbers you type are not transmitted to Core Education Design, not stored, and not recorded. There is no sign-up, no email gate and no lead capture.
You can model your school's scenario, close the tab, and Core Education Design will never know you visited. If you want to discuss what the numbers show, that is your decision to initiate.
Now test your school's assumptions.
The most useful result is not the largest number. It is a transparent, locally credible scenario that helps leaders evaluate both the capacity currently consumed and the curriculum quality stronger architecture could make achievable.