Parents will be hit with the biggest average private school fee increase in five years, with 20 schools now charging more than $35,000 a year for tuition.

The fee hikes – which range from 4 per cent to 10 per cent – come despite many of the state’s leading private schools reporting healthy surpluses and families already under strain from big cost-of-living increases.

For the first time, two schools will charge more than $40,000 a year for senior-year students.

Geelong Grammar’s tuition fees for years 10-12 day boarding have jumped to more than $46,000.Credit:Vince Caligiuri

The fee increase has at least one academic calling for caps on price rises, some parents reconsidering sending their children into private education and has also been criticised as nothing more than a grab for status.

Geelong Grammar, Victoria’s most expensive school, has raised its fees by 5.4 per cent to $46,020 for year 12 day-boarding students. It’s the sharpest increase the school has had in the past five years, after it froze fees for a year in 2021 at $41,792.

Jewish day school Mount Scopus Memorial College raised its fees to $40,860 this year from $38,960 in 2022.

Mid-fee schools have followed suit, with Bacchus Marsh Grammar and Ballarat Clarendon College raising fees by about 5 per cent.

Education payment provider Edstart reported the last time the average increase reached 4 per cent was in 2018. There was a 3.68 per cent rise in 2019, a 3.16 per cent rise in 2020 and a drop to an average .4 per cent rise in 2021 as schools implemented price freezes due to the pandemic. They began rising last year again to 2.9 per cent.

Victoria’s 23 highest-fee schools reported a combined surplus of about $127 million in 2021, analysis of their reports to the Australian Charities and Not-for-Profits Commission reveal.

Non-government schools are exempt from paying income tax but, under rules for the government funding they also receive, must use surplus funds for educational purposes.

Australia’s annual inflation rate rose to 7.3 per cent in November, its highest rate since 1990, even as school education costs remained static, rising just 0.7 per cent, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

A Glenhuntly mother-of-three, who wished to remain anonymous, sends her daughter to Mount Scopus Memorial College for prep but has opted to remove her two primary school-aged sons due to the cost.

She said private school was becoming more and more unaffordable for most people and parents were reconsidering because of combined cost-of-living and fee increases.

“One person’s wages entirely need to go to school fees. The other one pays the mortgage, bills, etc,” she said.

“It makes no sense – why can a public school be under $1000 a year for primary and private school is $23,000 to $25,000?”

Another mother, who sent her four sons to St Kevin’s College and a daughter to Star of the Sea College, said she would be happy with the fee increases if she knew 100 per cent of it went into the pockets of teachers.

Comparison website Finder’s Parenting Report 2023 surveyed 1032 parents of children under 12, and found 17 per cent were contemplating moving their child from a private school to a public school to reduce their expenses. In Victoria, 8 per cent had already made the switch and 19 per cent were considering it.

Deakin University senior education lecturer Emma Rowe said there was nothing capping private school fees in Australia and that schools increased their fees because they could.

“Education is very closely linked to social mobility in society … it’s crazy we don’t have any controls or caps on fees and it’s crazy parents don’t demand it,” she said.

“I think people should think about the broader implications on society and social inequality.”

Education economist Adam Rorris said schools weren’t raising fees because they needed the money for students.

“What these schools are mostly selling is status,” he said. “It is schooling as a positional good, and if they don’t raise their fees, their status goes down.

“It’s dreary and it’s tawdry, because at the same as they raise more money than they can spend, they refuse to relinquish government money badly needed by public schools.”

Independent Schools Victoria chief executive Michelle Green said fees charged by independent schools varied widely to reflect the diversity of their programs, facilities and resources.

Mount Scopus Memorial College principal Rabbi James Kennard.Credit:Justin McManus

“In setting fees, all of these schools are conscious of the financial sacrifices parents make when choosing a school that best meets the needs of their children,” she said.

“Over the past three years schools have made considerable efforts to either freeze fees or apply modest increases, in light of the impact of COVID-19 restrictions on family incomes and school operations.”

She said schools took teacher salaries, which were the largest component of school operating expenses, into account when setting fees.

Mount Scopus Memorial College principal Rabbi James Kennard said their fee increase was due to rising costs, the consequence of low or zero increases during the pandemic and that “extensive assistance” was available in cases of financial need.

Higher inflation, operating and maintenance costs were also a factor in fee increases, said Edstart chief executive officer Jack Stevens, who had seen the number of students using their education payments business triple in the past 12 months.

Since 1970 to 2021, the independent school sector has grown from 4 per cent to 17 per cent of Australia’s student share (from 114,000 to 670,000 students), according to Independent Schools Australia.

Paul O’Shannassy, an education consultant with Regent Consulting, said many families were relatively sanguine about fee rises this year, after two years of COVID-driven fee freezes.

“When it’s going up just a little over half of CPI, it’s hard to see it as unreasonable,” he said.

Though some families might be struggling with the higher cost of living, most who send their children to non-government schools would make other sacrifices.

“If anything it’s the last thing parents will change, because it’s their kids and it’s their friendship groups … people find a way, they give up other things like a holiday because this is prioritised.”

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