Children's Services Award Pay Rates 2026-27: Every Level

The Children's Services Award 2010 (MA000120) is the modern award covering employers and employees in the children’s services and early childhood education industry. Where it applies, the rates in it are the legal minimum. An enterprise agreement or a contract can pay more than the award, never less.

This page carries the current rates, which take effect from the first full pay period on or after 1 July 2026, not the superseded 2025 table. On the current scale a Level 1 Introductory Educator is paid $28.81 an hour and $1,094.80 a week, rising to $46.12 an hour at the top of that table. Last year’s figures are not republished here, because a page that carries two financial years at once is how the wrong number reaches a payslip.

Yes. The rates above are the increased ones and apply from the first full pay period on or after 1 July 2026, following the Fair Work Commission’s Annual Wage Review. Separately, a service that receives the Commonwealth Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) Worker Retention Payment must pay a Level 1 Introductory Educator at least $30.06 an hour from 1 July 2026, which is 4.3% above the award minimum on this page. That is a grant condition set by the Department of Education rather than an award rate, and it reaches only the services that receive the grant. A $3.6 billion extension announced on 17 June 2026 runs the payment to 30 June 2028 and opens it to Family Day Care and In Home Care services that employ their educators, without setting a higher percentage.

Both figures are right, and they answer different questions. $28.81 an hour is the Level 1 Introductory Educator minimum in MA000120 itself. $30.06 an hour is the minimum a service must pay that same worker from 1 July 2026 if it receives the ECEC Worker Retention Payment, a Commonwealth grant run by the Department of Education, which publishes the rate at education.gov.au/early-childhood/providers/workforce/worker-retention-payment/minimum-rates on a page it dated 29 July 2026 and we read on 11 September 2026. The payment is usually described as 15% above the award, but the gap here is 4.3%, because the 15% is calculated on the older classification rates the department defines as the applicable award rates. The award’s own educator classifications were restructured and lifted on 1 March 2026 by the Fair Work Commission’s gender-based undervaluation decision, and the department permits the grant to cover that award increase, so the two figures converged instead of compounding.

No. The payment is a grant a provider applies for, not a rate that follows the award. A provider can apply only if it holds Child Care Subsidy approval and runs a Centre Based Day Care or Outside School Hours Care service, or a Family Day Care or In Home Care service that engages all its educators as employees. Preschools and kindergartens are not eligible, and Family Day Care or In Home Care services that engage educators as contractors are not eligible. Where a service is funded, the rates reach workers covered by MA000120 and the Educational Services (Teachers) Award 2020, and workers doing those duties under another instrument. Everywhere else the award figures above are the minimum, so the question to put to an employer is whether the service receives the worker retention payment.

The award sets allowances, including for broken or split shifts, in a separate clause from the minimum rates. This page publishes ordinary-hours minimum rates only. No allowance figure is shown here, because nothing ships on this site that has not been read from the award text and checked a second time.

The award publishes 2 separate minimum rate tables and both are reproduced above, with 12 classifications between them. Level numbering repeats across the two, so match the classification wording on your contract or roster rather than the level number on its own.

No. These are ordinary-hours minimum rates. Evening, weekend, public holiday and overtime work attracts a higher rate set separately in the award, and those rates are not published on this page.