Wealthy schools find another money tree
Some Sydney private schools are taking a leaf out of the restaurant trade playbook, charging steep reservation fees.
Editorial
December 28, 2025 — 5.00am
Fees at Sydney’s wealthiest schools continue to rise in lock step with Sydney real estate prices, with the most expensive now billing parents more than $51,000 a child.
The record-high charges come as private schools grapple with the loss of government money over recent years due to funding levels being adjusted for fairness under the Gonski model, and rising salary costs.
But some aspects of wealthier schools’ cultures undermine their cries of poverty.
The Herald’s education editor, Christopher Harris, reported last week that at least a dozen Sydney schools had discovered a handy little earner, charging parents $5000 for enrolment fees to secure a place for their child. The fee to preserve a place for one boy at the top-performing selective private school, Sydney Grammar, has hit $9000, comprising an $8735 enrolment fee and a $300 application fee.
Application fees provide a huge windfall for schools, adding millions of dollars in revenue to the collection of private school fees.
Carly Landa from Regent Consulting, which advises prospective private school parents, said families typically applied to several schools because the application process was highly competitive – and it was becoming more so as parents cast a wide net among waitlists. Landa said it was not uncommon for some parents to submit NAPLAN scores, family references and school reports to receive various offers, and that the application fee was an attempt to weed out multiple applications.
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The situation has elements of tone deafness, however, such as that exhibited by The King’s School in agreeing to send its headmaster and his wife on a business-class trip to Britain to watch the 2022 Henley Regatta – at an estimated cost of $45,000.
Application fees are in keeping with a disturbing trend in the education sector. Some of Australia’s private schools have augmented their faith-based roots with a new corporate ethos, and apart from higher fees and application charges that resemble restaurant bookings, they increasingly turn to the bankruptcy system to recover unpaid debts from parents.
A new report by Financial Counselling Australia (FCA) found that education accounted for 2 per cent of all forced proceedings around the nation, and that last financial year applications topped 43, a 73 per cent rise on the previous year.
FCA thought the rise could be attributable to mortgages and rising living costs, which are putting pressure on already tight budgets as parents struggle to keep their child at the same school. It noted that many schools still lacked financial hardship policies or payment plan options for struggling families to shelter children from such ignominy.
British magazine Private Eye has a long-running joke about a fictional snobbish independent school that skewers the perceived elitist culture of private education, where wealth counts more than merit. The fictional school boasts a pseudo Latin motto – Quis paget entrat. Translation: “He who pays gets in”.
The chasm between school pastoral care and profits galore has rarely been bettered captured.