The Commonwealth Prac Payments scheme is expanding to ten new professions. InPlace customers can get started or expand immediately using existing functionality, because the solution has already been live since July 2025.
The federal government has confirmed it will extend Commonwealth Prac Payments (CPP) to ten additional professions from 1 July 2027, including clinical psychology, physiotherapy, occupational therapy, speech pathology, pharmacy, paramedicine, radiography, rehabilitation therapies, audiology and podiatry. Eligible students will be able to access payments of up to $338 per week, adding to the support already available to nursing, midwifery, teaching and social work students since the scheme began.
For placement teams, this is good news for students but also adds a new operational challenge. Expanding CPP eligibility to ten additional disciplines involves more students, programs, and placement hours that must be tracked precisely to ensure correct government payments.
Commonwealth Prac Payments (CPP): Quick Facts
Start date
1 July 2027
Payment amount
Up to $338 per week, means-tested
Professions added
Clinical psychology, physiotherapy, occupational therapy, speech pathology, pharmacy, paramedicine, radiography, rehabilitation therapies, audiology and podiatry
Already covered
Nursing, midwifery, teaching and social work
InPlace CPP solution status
Live in production since July 2025
What Does the CPP Expansion Mean for Placement Teams?
Every institution offering one of the newly eligible courses will need a reliable way to confirm, for each student, that placement activity meets the criteria for payment. That includes being able to answer questions placement teams haven't had to answer at this scale before:
- Which students, across which of the ten newly eligible disciplines, are undertaking placement in a given period?
- How many hours has each student truly completed, and can this be verified if a payment is questioned or audited?
- How does that placement data move from the clinical or field setting into a system the institution can report from?
- How is this managed consistently across programs that may currently track hours in different ways, or not at all?
For teams already stretched across scheduling, compliance and supervisor coordination, expanding eligibility to this many new professions at once is a genuine administrative step change.
The InPlace CPP Solution: Live and Proven
This isn't a theoretical response to the announcement. InPlace already has a working CPP solution in production, built directly into the platform institutions use for placements today. As CPP eligibility extends to ten more professions, that solution scales with it rather than needing to be built from scratch.
Why InPlace for CPP?
Every participant in the CPP process, including students, placement coordinators, and employers, already uses InPlace for day-to-day placement management. The data needed to assess and process a payment, including placement dates, attendance, evidence, discipline, and cohort, already exists in the system. The InPlace CPP solution connects that existing data to a clean API into the institution's finance system to generate payments, rather than asking teams to stand up a parallel process.
✓ No new platform
Fully integrated within InPlace, so there's no new system for placement teams to learn, no separate logins, and no second source of truth to keep in sync.
✓ End-to-end process support
Covers the full journey from student application through to payment reconciliation, so nothing falls through the gap between the placement team and finance.
✓ Real-time tracking
Evidence, attendance and compliance are monitored during placements, not reconstructed afterwards, which means no scrambling to piece together records when a payment is queried.
✓ Finance API
Direct integration with payment systems to generate and reconcile payments, removing manual re-keying and the errors that come with it.
✓ Audit-ready dashboards
Purpose-built for compliance, budget monitoring and reporting, so an audit or funding review is a login, not a fire drill.
✓ Co-designed with universities
Built with input from institutions for real-world sustainability, so it holds up to how placement teams actually work, not just how a spec sheet describes them.
Not yet an InPlace customer?
If your institution still uses spreadsheets, email chains or disconnected systems for CPP-eligible placements, this is a good time to change that. Adopting InPlace gives you a modern, integrated placement platform with CPP management already built in and proven, not something you'd need to build or bolt on separately.
How it works
Students are automatically invited to apply for CPP based on their placement eligibility, no separate application system to manage.
Applications are completed online with interactive, real-time verification, supported by a rule-based validation system.
Approved applications generate automated payment instructions through the InPlace Finance API.
Payment status feeds back into InPlace, supporting reporting, audit readiness, and ongoing student support and oversight.
The solution also handles the operational detail that tends to trip up manual processes: eligible payment calculations, bulk adjustments, placement changes, and multi-year rate updates are all managed within the same workflow.
Reporting and compliance tools
Eligibility view
Track application statuses and reasons for ineligibility across student cohorts.
Evidence view
Monitor pending, partial and verified placement evidence for audit confidence.
Payment view
Stay on top of paid, pending and forfeited payments, minimising risk and anomalies.
Financial oversight
Analyse placement-related budgets, equity of funding, and institutional impact.
Government Reporting
Institutions can generate CPP Progress and Reconciliation Reports directly from InPlace, in the Commonwealth's required format, eliminating the need for manual compilation.
Ready to take the next step?
The ten newly eligible professions take effect from 1 July 2027, but institutions expanding into these disciplines can start reviewing eligibility, evidence and reporting workflows now. Whether you're extending an existing InPlace CPP setup or looking at InPlace for the first time, the fastest way to see it in action is a short discovery session.
Book a 30-Minute Discovery Session
See the InPlace CPP solution in action, and how it applies to your placement programs.
Book a Discovery SessionFrequently Asked Questions About the InPlace CPP Solution
What is the Commonwealth Prac Payments (CPP) scheme?
Commonwealth Prac Payments is an Australian Government scheme that pays eligible students up to $338 per week, means-tested, while they complete mandatory placement hours. It currently covers nursing, midwifery, teaching and social work students, and will extend to ten more professions from 1 July 2027.
Which professions become eligible for CPP from July 2027?
Clinical psychology, physiotherapy, occupational therapy, speech pathology, pharmacy, paramedicine, radiography, rehabilitation therapies, audiology and podiatry all become eligible from 1 July 2027, taking the total to 14 covered professions.
Does InPlace already support CPP?
Yes. The InPlace CPP solution has been live in production since July 2025, fully integrated into the standard InPlace placement workflow, so institutions do not need a separate system to manage CPP.
How does the InPlace CPP solution work?
Students are automatically invited to apply based on placement eligibility, applications are validated online in real time, approved applications generate payment instructions through the InPlace Finance API, and payment status feeds back into InPlace for reporting and audit readiness.
Do institutions need to build anything new for the CPP expansion?
No. Because the InPlace CPP solution already exists in production, extending coverage to the ten newly eligible professions is a configuration exercise for existing InPlace customers rather than a new system build.
Source: Yashee Sharma, "Tens of thousands of Aussies to get $338-per-week payments as government expands paid prac," Nine.com.au, updated 23 July 2026.
