Study leave is time away from work so an employee can study or train: a university subject, a professional qualification, or a short course that builds a skill the business needs. For employees it is a chance to upskill and advance their career. For employers it can be a retention tool, a capability investment, or simply a request that arrives with the exam timetable each semester.
Study leave is legally different from every other leave type in one important respect. The Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth) (the Act) does not mention study leave at all. There is no National Employment Standard for it, which means there is no default right to it, no default obligation to pay for it, and no standard set of rules governing it. Everything depends on the documents and industrial instruments that sit around the employment relationship: the modern award, the enterprise agreement, the employment contract and any workplace policy. Because the rules come from so many different places, employers often assume study leave works one way when it actually works another. This guide walks through the machinery in the order it usually matters: where an entitlement can come from, how a request gets processed, whether the leave has to be paid, what it does to superannuation and other entitlements, how repayment clauses operate, and where employers most often get into trouble.
There is no general right to study leave
Start with the statute, because it sets the default. A search of the current Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth) turns up no reference to study leave. The National Employment Standards in s 61 of the Act set out the minimum leave entitlements every national system employee has: maximum weekly hours, annual leave, personal and carer's leave, compassionate leave, community service leave, long service leave, parental leave, and notice of termination and redundancy pay. Study leave is not among them.
The consequence is straightforward. Unless an award, enterprise agreement, contract or policy says otherwise, an employer has no legal obligation to grant study leave or to pay for it. An employee who asks for study leave is asking for a discretionary benefit, and the employer is entitled to weigh it against business needs. But the moment the employer promises study leave, in writing or in a document that governs the employment, it becomes enforceable. That is why the first step in handling any study leave question is to identify what already applies to the employee, because the answer almost always comes from somewhere other than the Act.
There are only a few actors in this system. The employee makes the request. The employer decides, subject to whatever the award, agreement, contract or policy requires. The Fair Work Ombudsman investigates disputes about pay and entitlements, and the Fair Work Commission deals with applications that flow from them. Neither the Ombudsman nor the Commission has a study leave rulebook to apply, because the statute does not create one. Both simply enforce whatever the applicable instruments actually say.
Where study leave entitlements come from
Study leave provisions appear in four places, and an employee may be covered by several at once.
Modern awards
Some modern awards contain study leave or training leave clauses, and where they do the award terms govern. A concrete example is the Animal and Veterinary Services Award 2020, under which full-time and part-time veterinary surgeons get paid study leave for each completed year of service, the leave does not accumulate from year to year, and unused study leave is not paid out when employment ends, a position the Fair Work Ombudsman records as confirmed in [2013] FWC 4713. Awards also commonly make specific provision for apprentices and trainees, including paid time to attend the off-the-job training component of the apprenticeship or traineeship.
An employer that never checks its award can therefore grant less than the award requires, which turns a favour into a breach. The Fair Work Ombudsman's pay and conditions tools are the practical way to find out which award applies and what it says about study or training leave. Coverage questions are the most common reason to take advice, because borderline roles can sit under more than one award, or under none.
Enterprise agreements
An enterprise agreement can include study leave as an express term. Agreements are subject to the better off overall test when they are made, so a study leave term must not leave award-covered employees worse off overall, and no agreement can undercut the National Employment Standards. Where an agreement does provide study leave, it generally displaces the award on that point, so the agreement is the first document to check for employees covered by one.
Employment contracts and workplace policies
Many employers offer study leave voluntarily, as a benefit designed to attract and retain skilled staff. Once the benefit is written into an employment contract, or into a staff handbook or policy that the contract incorporates, it is a contractual entitlement. The employee can enforce it, and the employer must apply it consistently. Policy promises are the most common source of unintended study leave entitlements, because a well-meaning sentence in a handbook can bind the business to more than it intended. A policy that says the business "supports ongoing study" has already promised something, so the drafting of the policy is itself a legal decision.
How a study leave request is handled
When a request arrives, the sensible sequence runs like this.
- Check what applies first: Identify the award, any enterprise agreement, the contract and the policy before deciding anything. If the instrument creates an entitlement, the request is not discretionary.
- Get the details in writing: Ask for the course, the provider, the dates, the cost, and the employee's reasons for linking the study to their role. A formal application gives the decision a paper trail.
- Weigh the business impact: Timing matters: exam periods and census dates collide with coverage, deadlines and busy seasons. If the award or agreement sets conditions, apply them exactly as written rather than improvising.
- Decide and confirm in writing: Set out the dates, whether the leave is paid or unpaid, what happens to accruals, and any conditions attached to the arrangement. The confirmation letter or email is the document that will be relied on later.
- Check in during and after the leave: Reintegration is where the goodwill of the arrangement is realised or lost, and a scheduled return-to-work conversation is part of managing the leave properly.
If the entitlement comes from an award or agreement, the employer's discretion is constrained: it must apply the instrument's terms. If the arrangement is discretionary, the employer can refuse, but it should be able to point to a business reason and should treat like requests alike. Inconsistent treatment is what generates grievances, and a pattern of refusals that tracks a protected attribute, such as refusing study leave only to employees with family responsibilities, can raise discrimination issues that a lawyer should assess before a complaint lands.
Where there is no formal policy, the request can still be negotiated. Part-time study leave, flexible hours around classes, paid days for exams, and fee contributions are all options that can meet the employee halfway without a full leave period. Whatever is agreed should be put in writing, because verbal arrangements are exactly what disputes later turn on.
Is study leave paid?
There is no statutory obligation to pay an employee during study leave, in contrast to annual leave and personal leave, which the Act requires to be paid. Whether study leave is paid depends entirely on the award, agreement, contract or policy that creates it. In practice employers use three models.
- Fully paid study leave: Usually reserved for study that directly serves the business, and often offered as a retention benefit for hard-to-replace skills.
- Partially paid study leave: For example a capped allowance, reimbursement of course fees, or paid time for exams and assessment only.
- Unpaid study leave: The most common model where study leave is not a standard benefit, and the employee continues to study around work or takes leave without pay.
One payment point is easy to get wrong. If the business does pay for study leave, that payment is ordinary time earnings for superannuation purposes. The Australian Taxation Office's list of ordinary time earnings expressly includes study leave, so the employer must pay the superannuation guarantee on paid study leave, just as it does on annual leave. Unpaid study leave is different: no payment is made, so there is no ordinary time earnings and no superannuation obligation for that period, although an award or agreement can still require superannuation on top of what the legislation mandates, so the instrument should be checked.
What study leave does to other entitlements
The interaction between study leave and the rest of the leave system is where the practical surprises live.
- Annual leave: Annual leave accrues according to ordinary hours of work and paid leave, so a period of unpaid study leave generally means no accrual for that period. Employees who want paid time for study can instead ask to use accrued annual leave, and this is the one statutory hook that matters in this whole area: under s 88 of the Fair Work Act, an employer must not unreasonably refuse a request to take paid annual leave. A blanket refusal to let an employee take annual leave for study can itself become the dispute.
- Service and long service leave: Service is counted differently for different entitlements, and the Fair Work Ombudsman notes that service for some entitlements does not include certain unpaid periods. Long service leave is governed by state and territory legislation, and by award-derived terms under s 113 of the Act, and each regime treats unpaid time differently. Before approving an extended unpaid study leave period, check whether it breaks or pauses continuous service under the relevant long service leave law, because a twelve-month secondment to study can quietly reset an employee's long service clock.
- Personal leave and parental leave: These entitlements operate on their own terms and study leave does not displace them. The main risk runs the other way: an employee using personal leave for study purposes, which is a separate integrity question about the honest use of leave.
There is also the reintegration question, which is not strictly legal but causes legal trouble when ignored. An employee who returns from study leave to find their role gone, their hours changed, or their career stalled will look for a remedy. Clear written terms about the return, agreed before the leave starts, prevent that expectation gap.
Repayment clauses and training bonds
Where the employer funds the study, it is common to ask the employee to commit to staying for a period after the course, or to repay the costs if they leave early. These clauses are enforceable as a matter of contract in principle, but they fail in predictable ways. In Regional Express Holdings Ltd v Clarke [2007] FCA 957 the Federal Court upheld a finding that a pilot's training bond was unenforceable because it was inconsistent with the certified agreement that covered his employment. The lesson is that a repayment clause must be drafted consistently with any award or agreement that applies, and structured so it is not open to attack: scale the repayment down over the retention period, exclude repayment where the employee is made redundant or dismissed, limit it to genuine course costs rather than a penalty, and have the employee sign the agreement before the course starts. A bond that looks like a penalty, or that contradicts the industrial instrument, is the bond that collapses when the employer tries to enforce it.
The pitfalls that cost employers most
The recurring mistakes in study leave are not exotic. They are the ordinary failures of documentation and consistency.
- Promising study leave without documenting it: A sentence in an email or a throwaway remark can become the entitlement the employee enforces.
- Never checking the award: The study leave clause was there all along, and the employer discovers it only after refusing a request it covers.
- Applying the benefit unevenly: Like requests get different answers without a recorded reason, and the employee who was refused complains.
- Forgetting the annual leave route: Refusing a request to use paid annual leave for study without reasonable grounds puts the employer in breach of s 88 of the Act.
- Drafting repayment clauses that cut across the award: As in Regional Express Holdings v Clarke, the clause fails at the moment it is needed.
- Saying nothing about accruals and superannuation: The employee discovers the impact on pay, superannuation and service after the fact, and the dispute is about what was never communicated.
Each of these is avoidable at the drafting stage. A study leave policy that states eligibility, payment, approval process, accrual treatment and repayment conditions, applied consistently, prevents almost all of them.
Where a lawyer helps
Most study leave problems are preventable before any leave is taken. A lawyer's practical value shows up in three places. First, checking which award or agreement applies and what it actually requires, especially where coverage is unclear or a role sits between two awards. Second, drafting the study leave clause in the contract or policy so it says exactly what was intended: who is eligible, whether the leave is paid, how requests are assessed, and what happens to accruals and superannuation. Third, structuring repayment clauses so they survive scrutiny rather than collapsing on enforcement. The same work helps once a dispute has started, whether that is an employee holding the business to a promised benefit, a complaint about inconsistent treatment, or a claim for study leave pay that was approved verbally and never paid as promised. Early advice on any of those is considerably cheaper than defending the claim.
Answer the four questions before the leave starts
The decision that saves the most money in study leave is made before the leave starts, not after. For each arrangement, four questions should have written answers. Is there an award or agreement obligation? Is the leave paid or unpaid, and does superannuation follow? What happens to annual leave accrual and continuous service? And what happens if the employee leaves early? The business that writes those answers down, in a policy or a short agreement signed before the course begins, has done most of the legal work already. The cost of a lawyer reviewing that document once is modest. The cost of a dispute over a promised benefit, a repayment clause that fails, or a study leave payment that was never documented is the price of not having written it down.