1 May 2026 is the last salary column the 2024 agreement makes, and the agreement's nominal life is three years from 25 March 2024 (to March 2027). No successor agreement or further increase has been published, so there is no next scheduled rise to show.
Re-checked on 24 September 2026: the Department for Education's pay rates page still links the 2024 agreement and the School Teacher Web Rates sheet dated 8 May 2026, whose figures match the table below, and the Attorney-General's Department still lists the 2024 agreement as current.
South Australia teacher pay scale 2026 — every step
South Australia pays teachers on Step 1 to Step 9, and Step 9 is the only step that has to be applied for. Entry depends on qualification: Step 1 for a three or four year degree, Step 2 for a four year degree plus a Graduate Diploma in Education.
Full-time annual salaries before tax and before superannuation. Part-time teachers are paid these rates pro rata on their time fraction.
Teachers — Step 1 to Step 9
The classroom teacher scale. Where you enter depends on your qualification, and Step 9 is the only step you have to apply for.
| Step | Annual salary | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Special Authority | $74,083 | Teaching without a full qualification |
| Step 1 | $84,971 | Three or four year degree entry point |
| Step 2 | $89,350 | Four year degree plus a Graduate Diploma in Education |
| Step 3 | $93,735 | |
| Step 4 | $98,113 | |
| Step 5 | $102,509 | |
| Step 6 | $106,890 | |
| Step 7 | $111,269 | |
| Step 8 | $117,198 | |
| Step 9 | $123,236 | By application — top of the classroom scale |
Every salary links to its take-home figure. Where a salary is not a round $5,000 the link goes to the nearest amount the calculator publishes.
SA teacher salary 2026 at a glance
Full-time annual salaries from the first full pay period on or after 1 May 2026, read from the South Australian School and Preschool Education Staff Enterprise Agreement 2024. Tap a classification for every step, or a salary to see it after tax.
| Classification | Steps | From | To |
|---|---|---|---|
| Teachers — Step 1 to Step 9 | 10 | $74,083 | $123,236 |
| Advanced Skills, Highly Accomplished and Lead Teachers | 3 | $127,798 | $141,365 |
| Band B — deputy principals, senior leaders and coordinators | 6 | $133,736 | $172,842 |
| Band A — principals and preschool directors | 9 | $146,492 | $222,484 |
South Australia principal salary 2026
Principals are paid on their own scale, separate from the classroom teacher steps above. The figures below are read from the same South Australian School and Preschool Education Staff Enterprise Agreement 2024 schedule as the rest of this page and apply from the first full pay period on or after 1 May 2026.
| Principal scale | Lowest | Highest | Pay points |
|---|---|---|---|
| Band A — principals and preschool directors | $146,492 | $222,484 | 9 |
The principal scale. Band level follows the site, not length of service.
Every principal pay point is in the full table further down this page.
SA leadership, specialist and other pay scales
Advanced Skills, Highly Accomplished and Lead Teachers
Classifications above the classroom scale that keep you in the classroom. AST2 is closed to new applicants; HAT and Lead require national certification.
| Classification | Annual salary | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Advanced Skills Teacher 2 (AST2) | $127,798 | Closed to new applications since Term 1, 2022 — grandfathered |
| Highly Accomplished Teacher (HAT) | $133,736 | Requires national certification |
| Lead Teacher (LT) | $141,365 | Requires national certification |
Every salary links to its take-home figure. Where a salary is not a round $5,000 the link goes to the nearest amount the calculator publishes.
Band B — deputy principals, senior leaders and coordinators
Band B covers school leadership below the principal, and is where most teachers first move off the classroom scale into a leadership role.
| Band | Annual salary | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Band B-1 | $133,736 | |
| Band B-2 | $136,872 | |
| Band B-3 | $145,859 | |
| Band B-4 | $154,852 | |
| Band B-5 | $163,842 | |
| Band B-6 | $172,842 |
Every salary links to its take-home figure. Where a salary is not a round $5,000 the link goes to the nearest amount the calculator publishes.
Band A — principals and preschool directors
The principal scale. Band level follows the site, not length of service.
| Band | Annual salary | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Band A-1 | $146,492 | |
| Band A-2 | $156,111 | |
| Band A-3 | $165,737 | |
| Band A-4 | $175,359 | |
| Band A-5 | $184,989 | |
| Band A-6 | $194,607 | |
| Band A-7 | $204,231 | |
| Band A-8 | $213,855 | |
| Band A-9 | $222,484 | Top of the principal scale |
Every salary links to its take-home figure. Where a salary is not a round $5,000 the link goes to the nearest amount the calculator publishes.
Which agreement sets SA teacher pay
South Australia public school teacher salaries are set by the South Australian School and Preschool Education Staff Enterprise Agreement 2024, the instrument the SA Department for Education pays against. The rates below took effect from the first full pay period on or after 1 May 2026 and were read from that instrument on 24 September 2026.
These are the government (public) school scales. Catholic systemic and independent schools in South Australia negotiate their own agreements and are not covered here.
Which step am I on?
This is the part most teachers get wrong on their own payslip. Progression in South Australia is not simply one step per calendar year — the rules below are what the SA Department for Education actually applies.
One step for every 207 duty days
Clause 4.2 of the Teachers Award: a teacher is entitled to progress to the next higher incremental step on completing each 207 duty days served. For a full-time teacher the next increment falls due on the anniversary of the date the current increment was paid, pushed out by any days of leave without pay.
No teacher can advance more than one step for experience gained in any twelve calendar months, and excess days inside that period are disregarded. Part-time teachers accrue duty days pro rata, so a part-time load stretches the same step over more calendar time.
Your entry step is set by your qualification
A three-year degree, a Bachelor of Education, or a Bachelor of Teaching with a Graduate Diploma puts you on Step 1. A four-year, honours or higher degree also starts at Step 1.
A four-year, honours or higher degree combined with a Graduate Diploma in Education starts at Step 2. Someone with a minimum of six classification units but no full qualification is paid on Special Authority.
Step 9 is the one you have to apply for
Every other step comes with duty days. Step 9 does not. Under the Step 9 Teacher Guidelines, teachers who have completed 207 duty days at Step 8 are entitled to apply and to have the application individually considered.
You submit a Professional Development Plan. Importantly, the guidelines state there will be no quota of Step 9 teachers — meeting the requirements is the test, not competing against colleagues.
AST2 is closed; HAT and Lead are the live pathway
Clause 6.7.4 stopped accepting applications for AST2 after the end of Week 4, Term 1 in 2022. Teachers who held it keep it as their substantive classification, but nobody new can get it.
The live route above the classroom scale is national certification at the Highly Accomplished or Lead career stage. The department determines how many HAT and Lead positions are made available, and appointments run for up to five years — so unlike a step, it is not permanent.
Provisional registration and leadership eligibility
A provisionally registered teacher still progresses one step per 207 duty days served at their current step.
Clause 6.11.3(a) is a hard gate on leadership though: a teacher is not eligible to be appointed into a leadership position unless they have obtained full registration.
Checking your payslip: find the classification code on your payslip, match it to the first column of the tables above, and compare the annual figure. If your gross fortnightly pay does not divide back to the annual salary for your step, you are either on the wrong step or being paid pro rata on a time fraction. The SA pay calculator will convert an annual salary to fortnightly for you.
What a SA teacher salary is worth after tax
Gross salary is not what lands in your account. A graduate on $84,971 and a top-of-scale teacher on $123,236 both pay income tax and the Medicare levy, and most also have a compulsory HECS-HELP repayment deducted at these income levels. Every salary in the tables above links to its take-home figure — start with take-home pay on $85,000 or take-home pay on $125,000.
Superannuation sits on top of these salaries rather than inside them. Check the exact figure for your own step with the take-home pay calculator, and if you have a study debt the HECS repayment calculator shows what comes out at your income.
To check the PAYG amount on a single payslip, look up your gross pay in the ATO fortnightly tax table or, if your school pays monthly, the monthly tax table.
Salary packaging available to SA teachers
Public school teachers can salary sacrifice into superannuation, which reduces taxable income at your marginal rate. Because the classroom teacher scale runs through the 30% and 37% brackets, the saving is meaningful at the top of the scale and smaller at the graduate step. Work out your own number with the salary sacrifice calculator.
Salary sacrificing also lowers the income your compulsory HECS-HELP repayment is assessed on only in limited cases — reportable fringe benefits and reportable super contributions are added back for that test. If you are packaging, check the effect on repayment income before assuming a saving.
What this page does not show
We publish only what we could read from a primary source. These are deliberately left off rather than estimated:
- Band B-0, the lowest Band B point. It appears only in the scanned agreement schedule and not on the department's rate sheet, so it is single-sourced OCR and is not published here.
- The next increase after 1 May 2026 — the agreement's schedules simply end there and no successor has been published.
- The percentage size of past increases — the agreement expresses them only as dated dollar columns and states no percentages anywhere.
- Contract teacher rates and the principal site classification levels (SC1-SC6), which appear on the department rate sheet but not in the agreement schedules, and which two independent readings of that PDF did not agree on.
- Seconded teacher rates, which appear only in the scanned agreement and were not corroborated by a second source.
- Fortnightly and daily columns from the department rate sheet — the annual figures above are double-sourced, those columns are not.
- Preschool and hourly-paid instructor classifications, which are separate scales.
For anything in that list, go to the SA Department for Education.
SA teacher salary questions
Teacher salaries in other states
How this page is sourced▼
Every salary on this page was read from the South Australian School and Preschool Education Staff Enterprise Agreement 2024 or from the SA Department for Education’s own published salary schedule on 24 September 2026, and applies from the first full pay period on or after 1 May 2026. Nothing is estimated, averaged or interpolated: a step we could not read from a primary source is listed under “What this page does not show” rather than filled in.
State scales step up on dates written into the agreement, so re-check after the next scheduled increase. Take-home figures come from the site’s own calculator using ATO rates; because those pages exist in $5,000 steps, a salary that is not a round $5,000 links to the nearest one and says so.
Sources & References
- 1School teachers pay rates (School Teacher Web Rates, 8 May 2026)— SA Department for Education
- 2South Australian School and Preschool Education Staff Enterprise Agreement 2024 — Schedules 1.1 and 1.3— SA Attorney-General's Department
- 3Teachers Award (South Australia), consolidated — clause 4.2 Incremental Progression— South Australian Employment Tribunal
- 4Pay rates, forms for new employees and enterprise agreements— SA Department for Education
Last verified: 24 September 2026. Our content is based on the latest information from official Australian government sources.
Anita Bell
AuthorFounder & Senior Bookkeeper
Accountancy degree (2015); certified in Xero, QuickBooks Online, MYOB, Saasu, Zoho and Reckon One
Anita Bell earned her accountancy degree in 2015 and has worked as a senior bookkeeper with Prime Bookkeeping for over 5 years. This built her skills in Australian and New Zealand tax legislation and industry regulations. She is certified in Xero, QuickBooks Online, MYOB, Saasu, Zoho and Reckon One, and works with payroll and rostering software including Gusto, Deputy, Tsheets and KeyPay. She has strong experience in hospitality, building and construction, financial services, real estate, ecommerce, and medical and health services.
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