Ballarat’s poshest private schools revealed

The richest families with kids at Ballarat schools earn more than $200,000, data reveals. See where each school’s parents rank.

Ballarat Clarendon College is Ballarat’s poshest school.

Ballarat’s poshest schools – and richest parents – have been revealed, with families of a top-performing institution bringing in more than $200,000 a year.

The school with the highest percentage of VCE students with marks above 40 – Ballarat Clarendon College – has parents with median family incomes of $201,000.

This makes it Ballarat’s poshest school, ahead of Ballarat Grammar, the region’s richest school, where parents earn $188,000 and school fees are the city’s highest at slightly more than $24,000 for Years 10 and above.

By comparison, Clarendon College charges about $2000 less in the latter half of a student’s high school career.

More broadly, private schools have increased their fees more than 40 per cent in a decade while government schools have lifted theirs just 3 per cent.

Median income for parents at St Patrick’s College is $153,000.

St Patrick’s College follows those two schools in terms of parents’ earnings at $153,000.

That figure represents the largest single step down between local schools – a difference of $35,000 compared with Ballarat Grammar.

Loreto College lands in roughly the same spot: its parents have median incomes of $150,000.

Parents sending their kids to Damascus College come in at $139,000.

Ballarat Steiner School comes next, with median incomes of $114,000.

Parents with children at Ballarat Christian College earn $91,000, where fees are comparatively lower than other Ballarat schools at between $6000 and $7000.

Loreto College parents have median incomes of $150,000 while paying between $8000 and $9000 a year in school fees.

Considering the entire state, families with students attending Mount Scopus Memorial College, a leading Jewish school in east St Kilda, earn $344,000 a year, making them the wealthiest in Victoria.

Analysis by Save Our Schools, a state school funding lobby group, shows a number of the leading schools with the wealthiest parents are over-funded by the federal government by more than $20m between 2022 and 2028.

The highest is Penleigh and Essendon Grammar, which is over funded by $24m over six years, and also receives commonwealth funding of $123m over the same period.

Other over-funded schools with wealthy parents include Wesley College ($10m over six years), Mentone Grammar ($11m) and Ivanhoe Grammar ($12m).

The new figures show that 35 independent schools with a median taxable family income of $200,000 or more will be over-funded by $180 million from 2022 to 2028.

Of these, just 10 these schools will be over-funded by $103m.

The 35 schools will receive $1.7 billion in funding by the Commonwealth over the

period.

See the figures for Bendigo and the Mornington Peninsula.