Children's Services Award
Covers the children's services and early childhood education industry — long day care, occasional care, nurseries, childcare centres, day care, family-based childcare, OOSH, vacation care, in-home care, kindergartens, preschools, mobile centres and early childhood intervention programs. Excludes employers covered by Educational Services (Schools) General Staff, Higher Education Industry (General), Local Government or SCHADS awards. Standard rate is CSE Level 3 — Qualified Educator.
Fully built. Rates, allowances, penalties and any required apprentice / junior rates are all wired to the rate resolver and have been verified against the consolidated award text and the latest pay guide.
What's built
- All 8 CSE classifications (Levels 1-8: Introductory Educator through Director) at the post-1 March 2026 restructured rates.
- Support Worker stream (SW L1.1, L2.1, L2.2, L3.1) covering kitchen hand, laundry, cleaning, gardening, driving, non-trade maintenance and admin.
- Junior rates per cl. 14.3: under-17 (70%), under-18 (80%), under-19 (90%) of the Level 2 (Educator) rate. Juniors engaged at L3-L5 are paid the ADULT rate per cl. 14.3(a).
- Apprentice modelling using apprentice_year_1 / apprentice_year_2 slots since the award has only Y1 and Y2+ rates.
- Casual OT stacks 25% loading + OT explicitly per cl. 23.2(b) (175% / 225%).
- Saturday treatment per cl. 23.5(a) — all Saturday hours treated as overtime since cl. 21.2 limits ordinary hours to Mon-Fri only.
- Cooks who hold (or are working towards) an approved ECEC qualification AND may be required to work with children to maintain ratios are paid the CSE rate matching their ECEC qualification per cl. 14.1(c).
Known limitations
- PR794818 (1 March 2026) restructured the classifications — the consolidated source shows only the post-restructure rates. The prior 1 July 2025 amounts (under the older nomenclature) are not preserved in the current source. The seeder uses the post-1 March 2026 minimum-wage tables with effective_from = 2026-03-01.
Setup & special instructions
- Each employee must be assigned a sector — children_services (CSE stream) or support_worker — to drive the right rate scale.
- Junior employees engaged at L3, L4 or L5 are paid the ADULT rate (cl. 14.3(a)) — the junior percentages only apply at L1 / L2.
- Saturday hours are OVERTIME, not ordinary, because cl. 21.2 limits ordinary hours to Mon-Fri only.
- Expense-related allowance dollar amounts in cl. 15 reflect 1 July 2025 figures (PR786828 / PR774179 / PR786659) — those values are unchanged in the post-1 March 2026 text.
- • Children's services
- • Long day care
- • OOSH
- • Early childhood education
- • Preschools
The consolidated award text is the authoritative source. Always confirm specific obligations against the award itself — Mployr's implementation status reflects what we've seeded; it does not replace legal advice.
Want to see this award running on your data?
We can demo a pay run on the children's services award using sample employees in a sandbox tenant — including any of the special-instruction steps above so you can see exactly what your team's day-to-day looks like.
Book a demo