By Lucy Carroll and Christopher Harris
Fees for some of Sydney’s top private schools have broken through the $45,000 mark, with all-girls institutions Kambala and SCEGGS Darlinghurst among the most expensive after lifting prices by at least five per cent.
Independent schools across the city are hiking fees for 2023, with seven set to charge parents more than $40,000 for year 12, when including tuition costs plus extra technology levies.
In a letter to parents, Kambala school council president Ainslie van Onselen said inflationary pressure had affected the school’s running costs, and it remained conscious of the impact the fee increases may have on families.
Sydney private schools Kambala, SCEGGS Darlinghurst and The Scots College are the most expensive schools for 2023.Credit:
“Fees are set to a level to meet operating expenses and contribute towards enhancing the experiences and facilities for students and staff. We will continue to make a priority the attraction, retention and development of the best staff possible,” van Onselen wrote.
Kambala will charge $43,650 for year 12 tuition, but a consolidated fixed levy charge – for items such as laptops and IT infrastructure – will tip the total final-year fees at the Rose Bay school to $46,300. It is a seven per cent increase on last year’s charges.
SCEGGS Darlinghurst will charge $45,044 for year 12, including tuition and an additional technology levy. All-boys school The Scots College in Bellevue Hill will lift fees by 4.7 per cent to a total of $44,600 for final year students.
Kambala also told parents it would hire Ron Ritchhart, a researcher from Harvard Graduate School of Education, to be the school’s “academic in residence” to work with teachers “over the next three years to ensure we deliver academic excellence to our girls”.
Another exclusive eastern suburbs girls school, Ascham, will raise final-year fees by four per cent to $42,550. In a letter sent to parents last week, the chair of the school’s Council of Governors Nell Anderson told parents the “employment market in the education sector tightened significantly” last year.
“Ascham has conducted benchmarking reviews to ensure that staff remuneration remains fair and competitive, and that we continue to be the school of choice for the highest calibre of staff dedicated to exceeding expectations,” she wrote.
Anderson said the school was dealing with cost increases across almost every expenditure category, particularly in insurance, facilities maintenance, utilities and ICT.
“In the context of these inflationary challenges, we will be increasing our tuition fees by 4.0 per cent in 2023.”
She said Ascham is also set to unveil plans this year for the “transformation of buildings and spaces across our campus to further enhance our girls’ opportunities to flourish”.
Not every school has released its fees for next year to parents. However, education lending group EdStart, which provides tailored loans for school tuition, said it partnered with 250 schools in NSW last year, an increase of 160 per cent compared to three years ago.
“The largest area of growth is with schools paying for our fee management service which allows their families to access payment flexibility at no extra cost,” said EdStart chief executive Jack Stevens.
Parents with two children enrolled in schools that charge $40,000 a year would pay $1500 a week in school fees if the cost was spread over 52 weeks of the year. That same amount of money would be enough to service a $1.2 million mortgage.
Many schools will lift fees from three to seven per cent this year after freezing or minimising increases during the pandemic. Average fee increases are usually around 2 to 3 per cent.
Late last year Geoff Newcombe, head of the Association of Independent Schools of NSW, said costs across sectors rose higher than inflation and were driven by teacher salaries, IT licences, power, maintenance and technology upgrades. The annual rate of inflation was 6.9 per cent in October, down from 7.3 per cent in September.
Private schools are also plugging the loss of tens of millions of dollars in government money, with funding levels adjusted under the schooling resource standard (SRS). Cuts will be phased in until 2029.
The King’s School in North Parramatta has hiked fees by 3.6 per cent to $42,936 for year 12, which includes a daily lunch levy, and Moriah College in the eastern suburbs increased fees by 3.25 per cent to $39,700. Stanmore’s Newington College raised fees by 5.7 per cent for senior school students to $38,884 for year 12 boys.
Newington College chairman Tony McDonald told parents insurance, electricity, and cybersecurity costs had all increased and the school had exercised restraint in recent times, with no fee increase in 2021 and only a modest one for 2022.
“As a result, the average annual fee increase over the past four years, including this year, is 3.7 per cent, which is low by historical standards,” McDonald said.
He said factors that were key when setting fees included the rise in inflation, decreases in government funding, and substantial recent investments including the purchase of a campus at Eungai Creek on the state’s mid-north coast and the development of a dedicated critical thinking and ethics centre.
Year 12 fees at the Shore School in North Sydney had one of the biggest increases of 6.9 per cent to $39,960 for year 12, while Abbotsleigh in Wahroonga will charge $38,365 next year, a 3 per cent increase on 2022 fees.
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