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Fees for Sydney’s wealthiest private schools have been in lockstep with Sydney real estate but if house prices are stalling, school fees are powering ahead. They have just topped $51,000.

Scots College is leading the fee hike for year 12s, but at least a dozen independent schools will charge more than $45,000 for a year’s education. The Herald’s education editor Lucy Carroll says the principals point to higher salaries, rising operating costs and cuts to government funding as reasons for the rises.

Some Sydney private schools will be charging more than $45,000 a year. Credit: Michael Howard

Several schools have more than tripled their tuition costs since 2005 and, at the current rate of increase, Carroll estimates fees will exceed $65,000 a year by the end of the decade.

Private schools have been grappling with a loss of government money over recent years as funding levels are adjusted for fairness under the Gonski model, with changes taking into account parents’ income. The union representing staff at 250 NSW private schools has reached a deal with the Association of Independent Schools that will lift teacher pay about 3 per cent above public school pay rates.

The private schools claim recent pay rises in the public sector have made government schools more attractive career possibilities, but some wealthy schools, including King’s and Shore, have paid well above public sector rates for years.

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Aspects of wealthier schools’ culture worryingly undermine their cries of poverty.

For instance, the King’s School’s 2022 decision to send its headmaster and his wife on a business-class trip to Britain to watch the Royal Henley Regatta at an estimated cost of $45,000 was tone-deaf hubris personified. And many schools with an average of about 1500 students and 170 staff offer remunerations close to the half a million dollar packages paid to NSW vice chancellors, who run universities with over 70,000 enrolments and 8000 staff.

Latest Australian Bureau of Statistics figures show the drift from the public school system is changing NSW education. Independent schools have increased enrolments significantly but public school enrolments declined for the fifth year in a row. Public school enrolments fell to 62.9 per cent, down from 2019’s 65.4 per cent.

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