Guardian Childcare & Education Pay Rates 2026: Educator, Room Leader & Director Pay

Guardian Childcare & Education operates around 170 centres, mostly in metropolitan Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth, with a workforce of educators, early childhood teachers, centre managers and cooks. It is privately owned and has grown by acquiring smaller operators.

Guardian's educators are covered by the Children's Services Award 2010 and its teachers by the Educational Services (Teachers) Award. Our corpus holds no federally registered Guardian enterprise agreement, so the award ladder below and the funded wage supplement are the numbers to check against your payslip.

The federal awards relevant to Guardian Childcare & Education 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, Zeuss Childcare I Pty Ltd declared 8,458 employees across 2 reporting entities — 24.9% casual and 94.1% women, with 318 in management roles. 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 6 September 2026, our corpus of 14,141 federally registered enterprise agreements holds no current agreement for Guardian Childcare & Education. 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 Guardian Childcare & Education, it beats the award figures above.

General award-compliance issues that come up across the early learning sector. This is a checklist for your own payslip, not a finding about Guardian Childcare & Education:

• 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.