Why private school fees are really surging as more parents choose non-government education

When Jane Caro sent her daughters to a local public school, her friends questioned her parenting and warned her about drug addicts in the playground.

As a senior copywriter with advertising agency Saatchi and Saatchi, during the 1990s and early 2000s, she was living on Sydney’s affluent north shore.

But apparently, comprehensive public schools had a bad name, even in a nice area north of the harbour.

“If, like me, you choose to send your children to a public school, you will have to defend your choice,” she told The Nightly.

“You will basically be told the most dreadful things about the school you send your child to — I was told my daughters’ school was a haven for heroin addicts and junkies.

“It’s also fear of being judged for your parenting. People said it with a straight face. I was criticised constantly.”

Parents will be paying 6 per cent more in private school fees this year, a level well beyond inflation, to enrol their children at either an upmarket or low-fee independent school.

Despite typically charging $50,000 a year in tuition fees, or almost double that if they are boarding, Australia’s most elite private schools hardly dominate the league table of the top-performing schools in NSW.

The way private school marketing runs is the same as fashion houses

North Sydney Boys, a selective school, was the State’s top performer in 2025 for the third year running, having taken the crown from James Ruse Agricultural High School which had been the uninterrupted champion from 1996 to 2022 based on Year 12 Higher School Certificate results.

Among the top ten, seven of them were public schools, all of the selective variety. Government schools on Sydney’s north shore and north-west also dominate the league table, suggesting good results have more to do with the social and economic dynamics of an area rather than whether it’s a public or private school.

The King’s School in Sydney’s north-west is charging $49,980 a year in 2026 - up $2935 or 6.2 per cent on 2025. But last year, it ranked 42nd in NSW, despite each Year 12 student getting $7678 in government subsidies.

With $38,370 in boarding fees added on, parents will be spending $88,350 in fees for Year 12 at a school that has produced former deputy prime minister John Anderson and ex-Liberal premier Mike Baird.

It received $117.7 million in revenue in 2024, including $73.6 million from tuition fees and another $9.8 million from boarding fees, plus $17.1 million from government grants, its most recent annual report showed.

The King’s School is not even Australia’s most expensive private school with Geelong Grammar charging $55,380 in 2026, marking a $3140 or 6 per cent increase on last year. With boarding added on, that’s $93,840 a year to have children educated at the same school that taught a future King Charles.

For all that cost and prestige, it last year ranked 94th in Victoria, with Clyde Secondary College, a government school in Melbourne’s outer south-east coming first in the State.

Private schooling has an emotional appeal to parents, says Ms Caro, who spent 35 years in the advertising industry before becoming a director of the Public Education Foundation a decade ago.

“The way private school marketing runs is the same as fashion houses: in the French fashion houses you’ve got haute couture and almost nobody can afford haute couture,” the former ABC Gruen program panellist said.

“They then sell sunglasses, lipsticks, skincare, perfumes with the same brand, so Chanel or Balenciaga or whatever it is, at a fraction of the cost of the haute couture but still overpriced and that’s where they make their money.

“The private school system’s the same. There’s the very high-fee schools most Australian families couldn’t even contemplate being able to attend — and they’re like the haute couture — and then there are the so-called low-fee Catholic and Christian schools but they are like the lipstick and the sunglasses. You’re buying a little bit of the status.”

Status or not, the median private school fee stands at $5863, based on figures from Independent Schools Australia, which represents 1230 schools last year educating a record-high 744,993 students. That marks a 5.9 per cent fee increase during the past year.

“Families choose independent schools because they believe they are getting real value – strong academic outcomes, wellbeing and pastoral care, specialist programs and school environments that reflect their values,” chief executive Graham Catt told The Nightly.

Independent schools are popular, recording the biggest 18.5 per cent surge in enrolments in the five years to 2024, followed by Catholic schools on 6.6 per cent and government schools on just 1 per cent, a Futurity Investment Group analysis of Australian Bureau of Statistics data showed.

Over 13 years of schooling, an independent school will cost an average of $369,594, compared with $247,174 for a Catholic school and $113,594 for a government school, with 90 per cent of those costs covering things other than fees like school uniforms, stationery, textbooks, laptops, camps and excursions.

The issue of government subsidies is a touchy subject with Mr Catt arguing independent schools are receiving $13,000 for every student, compared with $25,000 per student in the public system.

“At high-fee schools, public funding can be as low as $2000 to $3000 per student, meaning families are self-funding most of the cost of education,” he said.

“Independent school costs have risen for the same reasons families are seeing costs rise across the economy — wages, electricity, insurance, construction, technology, security and regulatory compliance have all increased sharply.”

Overall education costs are soaring, climbing by 5.4 per cent in the year to November 30, which was well above the overall headline inflation rate of 3.4 per cent, owing to the big increase in private school fees.

These tuition fees are emerging as a growing area of personal hardship with 2 per cent of bankruptcies during the last financial year, a comparable result to car loans, Financial Counselling Australia data showed.

This could see some parents reconsider whether private schools are worth the financial pain, debt repayment plan charity Way Forward’s chief executive Fiona Guthrie told The Nightly.

“It’s extremely expensive. There are certainly people who would be having to think twice about whether they are going to continue with that decision,” she said.

“I suspect that’s a trend I wouldn’t be surprised to see occur in Australia if costs continue to increase faster than inflation - clearly that’s going to make it difficult for people to make those payments.

“You would cut back on other things if you could but there’s only so much you can cut back on.”

Keeping up appearances is not easy.