Essington to raise tuition fees by 14.9 per cent in 2022

One of the Territory’s leading schools has revealed it is increasing its fees by 14.9 per cent next year as they plan for major refurbishments.

THE Essington School has released its 2022 tuition fees, with the elite institute hiking up their prices up 14.9 per cent.

It comes after a similar price increase last year.

The Essington School principal Brian Kennelly said a new method of funding — based on the median income of parents or guardians of students rather than the socioeconomic status of their residence — was largely to blame.

“The new way of measuring has really impacted on us for a whole lots of reasons,” he said.

“They’ve taken census data over the last three or four years that has inflated our families’ income a little bit.”

”The Federal Government perceive that our families can afford to pay more fees, but there is no regional indexation.”

Mr Kennelly said plans for refurbishment and rebuilding have also played a part in the steep incline.

“We have a master plan that is going to be implemented over the next 5 years which will renovate and build state of the art facilities for students,” he said.

The plans involve bringing back three levels of their students from where they currently are housed at Charles Darwin University.

“Basically we need to build a whole new senior college,” Mr Kennelly said.

The move to a higher tuition fee structure has hit some parents hard, with a number of families no longer able to afford the costs, but Mr Kennelly said it was all part of long-term planning.

“This is about strategic planning, as we look into our future, we can see in the long term we need to put up our fees to maintain the same level of education,” he said.

Parents planning to send their kids to the school will pay $11,240 annually for transition to Year 6 at monthly instalments of $1124.

Year 7 to 9 students can expect annual fees of $11,770 at monthly instalments of $1177.

families with students in years 10 to 12 will face $12,830 in fees annually, at monthly repayments of $1283.

Essington is regarded as one of the Northern Territory’s leading schools.

Eight out of the Territory’s top 20 NT Certificate of Education and Training recipients this year were from the Rapid Creek school.

Originally published as Essington to raise tuition fees by 14.9 per cent in 2022