Revealed: Median incomes of families sending students to some of Geelong’s richest schools

New figures show Geelong’s most expensive school does not attract the wealthiest families in the region, as the region’s poshest parents are revealed. SEE THE LIST.

Families who attend Geelong College and Geelong Grammar earn the highest median taxable income in the region.

                                      

Geelong’s poshest parents have been revealed, with the city’s most expensive school not attracting those with the highest income.

Families at Geelong College earn a median taxable income of $265,000, while families at Geelong Grammar earn $240,000, new figures show.

Comparatively, fees for year 12 students at Geelong Grammar are $49,720 this year compared to $34,480 at Geelong College.

The school boasting the wealthiest families in Victoria is Mount Scopus Memorial College, a leading Jewish school in St Kilda, where the median annual income is $344,000 – well over three times the median Australian family income of $92,040, as calculated by the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

Families attending Kardinia International College are third wealthiest in the Geelong region ($207,000), followed by Sacred Heart College ($176,000), and Christian College ($174,000).

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

The figures show 35 independent schools with a median taxable family income of $200,000 or more will be over-funded by $180m during that period.

Families who send their children to Geelong College earn a median taxable income of $265,000.

The 35 schools will receive $1.7bn in Commonwealth funding during that period.

Save Our Schools national convener Trevor Cobbold said hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars were being squandered on “highly privileged Victorian private schools serving the wealthiest families in the state while public schools serving the most disadvantaged families have to beg for funds”.

The income data is used in part to calculate Commonwealth school funding, but Mr Cobbold said the model was flawed because it did not take into account the incomes of many grandparents who paid school fees.

Under a funding model implemented by the Morrison Government, private schools that are over-funded are scheduled to receive less money by 2029.

Many of these schools will also have to pay state payroll tax that starts on July 1, with many raising fees as a result.

Federal Education Minister Jason Clare said every non-government school in Australia was either funded at the level David Gonski recommended, is above it, or is on track to be there by the end of the decade.

“But no public school is, apart from in the ACT,” Mr Clare said.

“At the election we made a commitment to work with the states and territories to get every school on a path to 100 per cent of its fair funding level.”

The content summaries were created with the assistance of AI technology, then edited and approved for publication by an editor.

Originally published as Revealed: Median incomes of families sending students to some of Geelong’s richest schools