By Alex Crowe
Melbourne parents will pay more than $40,000 for senior tuition at most high-fee schools in 2025, as private institutions slug families with additional costs to recoup payroll tax.
A year 12 student will cost parents $42,831 on average at Victoria’s wealthiest schools this year, about $7764 more than when that child started secondary school in 2020.
Geelong Grammar School remains the most expensive school in Victoria, charging $52,612 annually for years 10 to 12 at Corio. Senior students boarding at Corio and year 9s boarding at Geelong’s Timbertop campus will pay $89,276 in 2025.
Geelong Grammar, which boasts King Charles and Rupert Murdoch among its alumni, lost its spot as Australia’s most expensive school to Kambala in 2024. The Sydney all-girls school charged $51,385 for years 9 and 10 last year, and it is yet to finalise its fees for 2025.
Of the high-fee-paying schools analysed by The Age, annual tuition has increased 6.5 per cent on average since last year, well above the inflation rate of 2.8 per cent.
As revealed by The Age, lobby group Independent Schools Victoria is pushing Canberra to provide extra funding to compensate for schools having to pay the new state payroll tax, which was already paid by public schools.
Bhavika Unnadkat, Victorian board member of the Australian Parents Council, which represents private-school families, said parents were cutting back on holidays, eating out and other discretionary spending to cover the cost of rising school fees.
Unnadkat said some parents were considering sending their children to cheaper schools.
“It should be a gradual increase so parents can adjust and parents can plan,” Unnadkat said.
“A 6 per cent increase – all of a sudden – is a huge fluctuation in your budget and your planning.”
Carey Baptist Grammar School had the biggest increase year-on-year. The co-ed school in Kew is charging parents $43,810 for year 12 this year – plus a compulsory device rental of about $1000 – an 11.8 per cent increase on 2024.
Bhavika Unnadkat, a Victorian board member of the Australian Parents Council, and daughter Shirshti.Credit: Justin McManus
Year 10 at Carey, which includes a three-week camp in Far North Queensland, will cost parents $48,038, plus a compulsory device rental of about $1000.
High-fee-paying schools are increasingly listing the payroll tax alongside annual fees, rather than rolling it into a consolidated charge. Some schools said they would adjust the surcharge if the state government cut or scrapped the tax.
The payroll tax came into effect in July 2024 and requires schools with annual fees of $15,000 or more to pay a 4.86 per cent tax. Collectively, these schools would pay the state an estimated $101.8 million in 2025.
Public schools, almost all of which are still funded below the school resourcing standard agreed to by governments a decade ago, already pay payroll tax.
In addition to the payroll tax, Mount Scopus Memorial College and other Jewish schools, including The King David School and Bialik College, also list security fees exceeding $1000 separately to annual fees.
Mount Scopus principal Dan Sztrajt said the school was aware of the financial challenges many families were facing.
“In light of the new payroll tax imposed by the Victorian government, which will now be levied for the full year and over which we have no control, there will be a payroll tax levy of $1550 for each student for year levels prep to year 12,” Sztrajt said in a letter to parents.
“Should the government decide to reverse the applicability of the payroll tax then the levy will be removed.
“Given our significantly increased vigilance around security in the current climate, we are required to increase the security levy to $1150 per student for all-year levels.
“In the case that additional government funding for guarding is secured, the college will return a proportion of the security levy to families in the form of a credit.”
In addition to fees and bursaries, private schools receive most of their revenue from the Commonwealth government.
The Commonwealth will provide an estimated $8.7 billion in recurrent funding to independent schools, $10.4 billion to Catholic schools and $12 billion to government schools across Australia in 2025.
The Commonwealth has promised to reduce the recurrent funding for 299 non-government schools funded above the resourcing standard by 2029.
The federal education minister reviewed the funding agreement with Presbyterian Ladies’ College after The Age revealed in September the school, which received $9.2 million from the Commonwealth in 2022, was spending $85 million on a new sports complex.
The school has increased its year 12 fees to $41,156 this year, a 6.9 per cent increase on the $38,496 it charged in 2024. It is not among the schools receiving reduced reoccurring funding from the Commonwealth.
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