Busy Bees Pay Rates 2026: Educator, Room Leader & Director Pay

Busy Bees runs a network of long day care and early learning centres across the country, part of a global childcare group. Centre teams are early childhood educators, room leaders, cooks and centre directors, with a workforce that leans heavily on early-career educators alongside a smaller core of qualified early childhood teachers.

Educators and room-based staff at Busy Bees sit on the Children's Services Award 2010, while early childhood teachers running an approved kindergarten program are instead covered by the Educational Services (Teachers) Award 2020. Our corpus holds no current Busy Bees enterprise agreement, so the award tables below are what should be on the payslip.

The federal awards relevant to Busy Bees roles:

• Children’s Services Award 2010 (MA000120)
• Educational Services (Teachers) Award 2020 (MA000077)

Workforce snapshot. In its 2024-25 report to the Workplace Gender Equality Agency, Busy Bees Early Learning Australia Pty Ltd declared 3,464 employees across 3 reporting entities — 19.8% casual and 95.9% women. Source: WGEA 2025 Public Data File, data.gov.au (CC-BY 3.0 AU).

The Children's Services Award 2010 (MA000120) educator ladder, after the FWC's early childhood work value restructure, is:

The government-funded educator wage supplement is paid on top of these award rates by centres that have opted in — it is not part of the award floor. Early childhood teachers sit on the Educational Services (Teachers) Award instead.

Source: Fair Work Commission modern awards pay database, current-operative rates (1 July 2026 annual wage review). Casual figures add the 25% casual loading.

Cooks, cleaners, administration and other support workers in a centre sit on the award's support worker ladder:

Source: Fair Work Commission modern awards pay database, current-operative rates (1 July 2026 annual wage review). Casual figures add the 25% casual loading.

As at 25 September 2026, our corpus of 14,141 federally registered enterprise agreements holds no current agreement for Busy Bees. That usually means one of three things: the employer pays on the award (or on individual contracts above it), the agreement covering you is registered under a different entity name (check the employer name on your payslip and search our agreements database), or — for state public-sector employers — pay is set by a state award or agreement outside the federal register. If you have a copy of an agreement that names Busy Bees, it beats the award figures above.

The patterns worth checking on a Busy Bees payslip:

• Qualification not matched to level — a Diploma educator paid at the Cert III level, or a room leader paid as a floor educator.
• Funded wage supplement not passed on in full to eligible educators.
• Unpaid programming and documentation time, and unpaid time before opening or after close.
• Casuals under the minimum engagement or without the 25% loading.

Match your payslip to your classification in the agreement (or the award tables above), and price any gap with our back-pay calculator. Raise it in writing with payroll or your manager first — most underpayments are fixed at that step. Unresolved, the Fair Work Ombudsman (13 13 94) recovers underpayments at no cost, up to six years back, and your union can run the claim for you. Not sure which instrument covers you? Ask our AI advisor with your role and location.