Diploma of Leadership and Management
Build the person who can build what comes next.
Master yourself. Create opportunities. Influence people. Make it work. Graduate with practical leadership, management and entrepreneurship experience before most people have started.
Or read the common questions first
Places are limited by cohort capacity at each partner school
Telling us you are interested starts a conversation. It is not automatic enrolment and no payment is required.
What is in it for me?
Picture finishing school already able to lead a meeting, test an idea, read a budget and explain why your decision makes sense.
This program develops you first. You learn to understand yourself, find opportunities, communicate with confidence, work with people, manage money and turn a plan into something real.
Instead of waiting until university or your first job to discover how you perform, you begin practising now. That gives you something useful for employment, further study, leadership and an idea of your own.
One course · Four kinds of value
Build an advantage you can carry into every next step.
The future workplace will reward people who can think independently, work confidently with others and use technology without losing human judgement. This Diploma develops those capabilities together.
Financial and time value
A completed Diploma may support tertiary entry and, in some degrees, advanced standing. If a university approves credit, it may reduce subjects, study time and tuition still required.
Potential value, always confirmed by the university.Mental strength
Learn to recognise pressure, regulate your response, question assumptions and make better supported decisions when information is incomplete or changing.
Stay clearer when the situation gets harder.Personal growth
Practise using your voice, receiving feedback, explaining your thinking and finishing work that stretches you. Confidence is built through action, not promised by a brochure.
Know what you bring and how to keep improving it.Professional capability
Develop practical skills in communication, teamwork, concepts, risk, budgets and operations, then extend your digital capability through the separate graduate AI scholarship.
Bring human judgement and commercial thinking to future work.Four stages · Twelve connected units
Watch your capability grow.
You will not study twelve disconnected subjects. Each stage builds on the one before it, moving from understanding yourself to creating opportunities, leading people and delivering results.
Master Yourself
Before you lead a team, manage a business or build an idea, you need to understand how you think, respond and perform. This stage helps you become steadier, more self aware and more confident in your decisions.
Manage personal health and wellbeing
Your ambition only works if you can sustain it. Learn to recognise pressure early and build practical habits for study, work, recovery and long term performance.
Develop and use emotional intelligence
Learn what drives your reactions, how to read the room and how to adjust your communication without losing who you are.
Develop critical thinking in others
How do you know you are making the right decision? Learn to question assumptions, evaluate data, generate options and use decision models to separate evidence from bias.
Create Opportunities
Ideas become valuable when you can develop them, test whether people need them and make informed decisions about risk. This is where creative thinking starts becoming commercial thinking.
Originate and develop concepts
Move beyond the first idea. Use a structured creative process to generate possibilities, challenge weak assumptions and refine a concept until other people can understand its value.
Assess marketing opportunities
Investigate customers, competitors, market conditions and genuine demand. Learn to look for evidence before investing your time, money or reputation.
Manage business risk
Every worthwhile opportunity carries risk. Learn to identify what could go wrong, judge the likely impact and create controls that make action more responsible.
Influence People
A strong idea rarely succeeds alone. Learn to communicate clearly, build trust and create the conditions where different people can contribute and perform together.
Communicate with influence
Learn to present an idea, listen with purpose, respond to questions and negotiate towards an outcome without talking over people or losing respect.
Lead and manage effective workplace relationships
Explore what creates trust, what damages it and how leaders work through conflict while keeping important relationships productive.
Manage team effectiveness
Set shared goals, clarify expectations, support contribution and help a team measure and improve the way it performs.
Make It Work
Leadership is more than motivation. Learn to understand the numbers, organise the work and build systems that help a plan survive beyond the first burst of enthusiasm.
Manage budgets and financial plans
Forecast income and costs, track performance and explain what the numbers are telling you about a decision, project or business idea.
Manage business operational plans
Turn a goal into actions, resources, responsibilities, timelines and measures that show whether real progress is happening.
Develop administrative systems
Design workflows, procedures and information systems that reduce confusion and help work happen consistently.
The qualification requires six core and six elective units. Elective selection and delivery order may change within the BSB50420 packaging rules where required by the approved training and assessment strategy.
Student voices
Don’t take our word for it.
Take theirs. Hear from the students who have been in the room, taken on the projects and grown into leaders, in their own words.
Our Amazing Leadership students · Open on YouTube (opens in a new tab)
- 99%of our 2025 graduates completed on time
- 1,000+learners personally mentored since 2008
- FinalistQueensland Training Awards
Five questions · Start with you
What kind of future leader are you becoming?
Leadership is not one personality type. Choose what feels most natural. Your result will show a current strength, a useful stretch area and the units that can help you grow.
Our point of difference
Learning that feels nothing like homework.
Every tool you need, in every format you like, with assessments built around what you actually care about. This is what makes the Australian Institute of Learning different.
Contextualised assessments
No boring assessments. Ever.
You are not working on generic case studies. You are working on something real to your passion, whether that is sport, fashion, gaming, the environment or the business you want to build one day.
- Sport
- Fashion
- Gaming
- Music
- Environment
- Your future business
In class training
Learn face to face at your school, with a trainer who knows your name and your goals.
Live Zoom sessions
Jump into interactive live sessions and keep learning wherever you are.
Live Q&A
Bring your questions and get real answers from your trainer, fast.
Video tutorials
Replay any lesson, pause it and go at your own pace.
Podcasts
Learn on the bus, at the gym or on a walk.
Gamification
Earn points, level up and watch your progress grow.
AI artefacts
AI powered visuals, explainers and learning agents that bring big ideas to life.
Everything in one place
Every tool and resource lives in your Virtual Campus, ready 24/7.
The usual way
- Reading long PDFs
- Generic case studies
- Assessments that feel like busywork
The Australian Institute of Learning way
- Watch, listen, play and build
- Projects about what you care about
- Work you are proud to show
Diploma level projects
Your assessments
You choose what your projects are built around.
Imagine studying a unit and completing the assessment through an industry, business idea, career direction or problem that is real to you. You research something you genuinely want to understand, present what you found and build evidence of what you can do.
If you want to enter property, sport, health, technology, construction, fashion or another industry, that world can become the setting for your work where the unit requirements allow. The assessment still meets the national standard, but the subject becomes yours.
Start with what matters to you
Use your passion, future business or preferred industry as the focus instead of receiving a project that feels disconnected from your life.
Research something real
Work through decisions, customers, risks, people, budgets and systems in a context you may actually use after school.
Show how you think
Build research and presentations that demonstrate how you reached a decision, supported an idea and communicated the result.
You are not waiting until the end of the journey to begin understanding your future. You are already testing ideas, exploring industries and learning how to explain your thinking. Personalisation changes the subject of the project, not the evidence required to be assessed as competent.
A smaller college with support that feels personal
You are known here.
Your trainer can notice your progress, give direct feedback and help you work through challenges. Digital tools give you more ways to revisit and practise. The trainer remains responsible for teaching, feedback and assessment decisions.
Personal support
Direct trainer access, feedback, regular progress conversations and private educational wellbeing support when needed.
Virtual Campus tools
AI learning agents, video tutorials, podcasts, progress points and learning games support study between sessions.
Connected delivery
Learning led by your trainer at school, with access to interactive Zoom sessions where applicable to the approved delivery plan.
Wellbeing conversations are educational support, not clinical treatment or emergency care. AI tools support learning but do not make assessment decisions.
A family perspective
THE BESTT FAMILY
Hear directly from the Bestt family about their experience with the Australian Institute of Learning and the difference meaningful training, support and encouragement can make.
This video describes one family’s experience. Individual learning, pathway, credit and employment outcomes vary and are not guaranteed.
The Bestt family describe the training, support and encouragement their family experienced with the Australian Institute of Learning. Individual outcomes vary.
For every graduate
Your Diploma + an AI course
Build the AI skills you need for the future.
We do not want to send you into the workforce with only a Diploma. Every student who successfully completes BSB50420 receives a 100% scholarship into the Australian Institute of Learning’s separate AI Skills for the Workforce course, with no additional tuition fee.
You will develop practical ways to use AI for productivity, communication, research and digital work. That gives you another capability to discuss on your résumé and in interviews while showing that you are preparing for an AI enabled workplace.
Certificate of Completion issued after completing the AI courseJobs and Skills Australia reports that generative AI is more likely to augment human work than replace it, while reshaping how work is performed. Read the Australian Government study.
AI Skills for the Workforce is separate professional learning that is not nationally accredited. It is not a unit or component of BSB50420 Diploma of Leadership and Management.
School and university pathways
A qualification that may open more than one door.
A completed Diploma may support QCE, tertiary admission and university credit pathways. These outcomes are determined by the relevant authority or university, not by the Australian Institute of Learning.
Potential QCE credits
Eligible Queensland students may accrue one QCE credit for each eligible Diploma unit completed, up to the QCAA maximum of eight credits and subject to the QCAA rules for units from the same training package.
Check current QCAA rulesPublished selection ranks
Queensland universities publish selection ranks of 82.00 to 87.00 for a completed AQF Level 5 Diploma, such as this one. A selection rank is not an ATAR.
See the selection ranks by universityUniversity credit pathways
Start your degree with credit already earned.
Credit offered for BSB50420 Diploma of Leadership and Management by the Australian Institute of Learning’s three formal university partners.
Southern Cross University
Credit is shown in units. Southern Cross University has confirmed these current approved arrangements.
- Bachelor of Business 30072558 units (33%)
- Bachelor of Business (Accounting) 30072558 units (33%)
- Associate Degree in Law (Paralegal Studies) 22063514 units (25%)
- Bachelor of Legal and Justice Studies 30061104 units (16%)
Credit shown reflects Southern Cross University’s credit transfer guide (published 12 October 2026). Arrangements are reviewed by the University, so request written confirmation from the Australian Institute of Learning, which holds the University’s direct written agreement.
Griffith University
Credit is shown in credit points (CP). Griffith Business has approved these credit articulation arrangements with the Australian Institute of Learning.
- Bachelor of Business 1632Then complete 160CP (2 years), starting Trimester 1, 2 or 3.80CP
- Bachelor of International Tourism and Hotel Management 1408Then complete 160CP (2 years), starting Trimester 1 or 2.80CP
Griffith University offers up to 4 credits against most degrees based on completion of your Diploma.
Full details are listed in Griffith University’s Credit Precedent Database at griffith.edu.au/credit (search Australian Institute of Learning Pty Ltd). Admission requirements and how to apply are at degrees.griffith.edu.au. These arrangements remain current while the Australian Institute of Learning is approved to deliver the qualification by the Australian Skills Quality Authority (ASQA) and is listed on the National Register of VET Providers (training.gov.au).
University of Southern Queensland (UniSQ)
Credit is shown in courses. It is indicative and confirmed by UniSQ case by case.
- Bachelor of Business8 courses
- Bachelor of Accounting8 courses
- Bachelor of Aviation (Aviation Management)8 courses
Credits are subject to change. Complete your degree at the Toowoomba, Springfield or Ipswich campus, or online. Enquiries: study@unisq.edu.au or 07 4631 5316.
Other universities may offer further pathways through the Diploma of Leadership and Management. Please enquire directly with the university.
Queensland selection ranks
What a completed Diploma can mean for university entry.
BSB50420 Diploma of Leadership and Management is an AQF Level 5 qualification. Universities generally publish selection ranks by qualification level and assessment type. These are qualification level mappings, rather than individual endorsements of Australian Institute of Learning courses.
| University | Selection rank | Published basis and conditions |
|---|---|---|
| Queensland University of Technology | 87.00 | Completed ungraded AQF qualifications, without a qualifying STAT result. |
| Griffith University | 87.00 | Completed ungraded AQF qualifications. Some programs are excluded from this pathway. |
| The University of Queensland | 82.00 | Competency based qualifications. Special timing rules apply to current Year 12 students. |
| Bond University | 82.00 | Published assigned ranks for completed AQF Diplomas and Advanced Diplomas. |
| CQUniversity Australia | 82.00 | Completed competency based qualifications. Graded qualifications can receive different ranks. |
| University of Southern Queensland | 82.00 | Published ranks for completed competency based AQF qualifications, including qualifications completed while at school. |
| University of the Sunshine Coast | 82.00 | Completed competency based qualifications. The University generally considers the highest available selection rank. |
| Australian Catholic University, Brisbane | 82.00 | Indicative equivalents published for applications through QTAC. Different equivalents apply through other state admission centres. |
| James Cook University | 82.00† | Confirm the current selection rank directly with the University. |
† Marked in the Australian Institute of Learning credit pathways brochure. A selection rank is not an ATAR.
Your trainer and mentor
Ricky Naicker
Founder and Lead Trainer of the Australian Institute of Learning. Ricky brings the lessons of building and leading multimillion dollar businesses into the room, alongside an MBA and twenty additional qualifications and professional accreditations across business, leadership, management, human resources, training and assessment.
Ricky founded the Australian Institute of Learning in 2008 and has personally mentored more than one thousand learners. He is a Queensland Training Awards finalist whose approach combines high expectations, practical business context and genuine care for the person doing the learning.
View Ricky’s 21 published qualifications and professional accreditations
Postgraduate
- Master of Business Administration
- Graduate Diploma of Strategic Leadership
- Graduate Diploma in Management
- Graduate Diploma of Management, Learning
- Graduate Certificate in Management
Advanced Diplomas
- Advanced Diploma of Management
- Advanced Diploma of Management, Human Resources
- Advanced Diploma of Business
Diplomas
- Diploma of Management
- Diploma of Human Resources Management
- Diploma of Business
- Diploma A+ Supervisory Engineering
- Diploma of Business Management
- Diploma of Accounting, South Africa
- Diploma of Training and Assessment
- Diploma of Vocational Education and Training
Certificate IV and professional
- Certificate IV in Marketing
- Certificate IV in Training and Assessment
- Certificate IV in Small Business Management
- Accredited Mental Health First Aid Provider
- Certified Digital and Social Selling Specialist
Monthly course payment
per month for 14 monthly instalments. The Australian Institute of Learning currently advertises these instalments as interest free.
- Course fee
- $3,500
- Enrolment and student administration fee, charged once
- $280
- Total required cost
- $3,780
See the value before the cost
Pay for real teaching, personal support and a qualification you can use.
The fee supports a complete learning experience, not a collection of PDFs: nationally recognised training, live teaching, assessment, feedback, digital learning tools, personal support and a graduation pathway.
Your graduation moment
See where the work can lead.
Watch Australian Institute of Learning graduates step onto the stage, celebrate what they completed and share the moment with the people who backed them.
Qualification completion depends on satisfactory completion of all training and assessment requirements. Attendance at a graduation event is not required for issuance.
Graduates step onto the stage and share the moment with the people who backed them. Attendance at a graduation event is not required for a qualification to be issued.
Completed on time
For Australian Institute of Learning students who graduated in 2025.
Approved Diploma of Business training provider
A Diploma designed to work with school life.
Students learn with the Australian Institute of Learning during school terms. The program builds Diploma level capability while students remain connected to their school community and senior studies.
The course commences in Term 1 and finishes in Term 4.
Timing depends on the school schedule and availability. If additional training days are required, the course may extend to five terms.
Australian Institute of Learning is an approved training provider for BSB50120 Diploma of Business at:
The 99% figure is calculated from the rate of completion on time for Australian Institute of Learning students who graduated in 2025.
The approved training provider statement above relates to BSB50120 Diploma of Business. Delivery of BSB50420 Diploma of Leadership and Management is subject to school approval, delivery availability and cohort capacity.
Straight answers
The questions parents and students actually ask.
No sales language here. If something is decided by a university, a school or the QCAA rather than by us, this section says so.
Tell us you are interested and we will talk it through with you and your school before anything is committed.
I want to know moreIs this a real, nationally recognised qualification?
Yes. BSB50420 Diploma of Leadership and Management is a nationally recognised qualification on the Australian Qualifications Framework, delivered by the Australian Institute of Learning, RTO 32309. It is the same qualification code an adult would study, not a version made only for schools.
Will this affect my ATAR or my senior school results?
The Diploma is a vocational qualification studied alongside your senior subjects, so it does not replace or reduce your ATAR pathway. Eligible Queensland students may also accrue QCE credit for completed units, up to the QCAA maximum of eight.
Your school confirms how the class fits your timetable and subject load before you start.
When does the course start, and how long does it take?
The course commences in Term 1 and finishes in Term 4. Classes are delivered at your school, with live Zoom access where applicable, so the study happens inside a scheduled class rather than on top of a full timetable.
Timing depends on the school schedule and availability. If additional training days are required, the course may extend to five terms.
What does it cost, and can we pay it in instalments?
The total required cost is $3,780: a $3,500 course fee plus a $280 enrolment and student administration fee, charged once. The Australian Institute of Learning currently advertises this as fourteen monthly instalments of $250, interest free.
No payment is required to tell us you are interested.
How many units are there, and what do they cover?
Twelve units in total: six core and six electives, grouped into four stages. You master yourself, create opportunities, influence people, then make it work. The units cover wellbeing, emotional intelligence, critical thinking, concept development, marketing opportunities, risk, influence, workplace relationships, team effectiveness, budgets, operational plans and administrative systems.
Elective selection and delivery order may change within the BSB50420 packaging rules where the approved training and assessment strategy requires it.
What makes learning here different?
You learn through in class training at your school, live Zoom sessions, live question and answer sessions, recorded video tutorials, podcasts, gamification and AI artefacts, with every tool and resource in one Virtual Campus.
Your assessments are contextualised. Instead of generic case studies, your projects are built around something real to your passion, so the work means something to you.
Can the Diploma give me credit towards a university degree?
It can. The Australian Institute of Learning has credit pathways for the Diploma of Leadership and Management with Southern Cross University, Griffith University and the University of Southern Queensland. Depending on the degree, that is four to eight units at Southern Cross University, 80 credit points towards the Bachelor of Business or the Bachelor of International Tourism and Hotel Management at Griffith University, or eight courses at the University of Southern Queensland.
Credit is always decided by the university and arrangements can change. Other universities may offer further pathways through the Diploma of Leadership and Management. Please enquire directly with the university.
What is the free AI course for graduates?
Every BSB50420 graduate receives a 100% scholarship into the Australian Institute of Learning graduate AI course, plus a Certificate of Completion once that separate course is finished. It is a distinct short course, not part of the Diploma assessment.
What happens if I do not finish the whole Diploma?
You are issued a Statement of Attainment for every unit you have completed and been assessed as competent in. Those units stay on your record and can be recognised if you continue the qualification later or elsewhere.
What if I change schools part way through?
Contact the Australian Institute of Learning as early as you can. Continuing depends on whether the program is delivered at your new school and on cohort availability, and in some cases study can continue through live online access. It is handled case by case.
Who actually teaches the program?
Ricky Naicker, Founder and Lead Trainer of the Australian Institute of Learning. He founded the organisation in 2008, has personally mentored more than a thousand learners, holds an MBA and twenty further qualifications and accreditations, and is a Queensland Training Awards finalist.
Does saying I am interested commit me to anything?
No. Telling us you are interested starts a conversation. It is not an enrolment, it does not guarantee a place and no payment is required to submit it. Final confirmation follows the suitability check and enrolment process, and depends on school approval, delivery availability and cohort capacity.
How do I know there is a place available?
Intake is limited by cohort capacity at each partner school, so places are confirmed school by school. Telling us you are interested is how the Australian Institute of Learning and your school check suitability, support needs and remaining capacity for your year level.
Do not just prepare for the future. Learn how to shape it.
We would love to meet you and help you take the first step.
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