Adelaide Private and Catholic School Fees in 2026

Adelaide's best-known independent schools charge between about $16,800 and $33,000 a year once compulsory levies are counted, and the number a school advertises as "tuition" is almost never the whole bill. Below are the 2026 fees we could confirm on each school's own published schedule — with what they leave out, the schools we could not verify (and why we won't guess), and an honest explanation of why we don't publish a single "Adelaide average".

A note on sources and dates. Every dollar figure here was read from the school's own 2026 fee schedule in September 2026. School fees change every year and levies vary — always confirm the current, full figure with the school before you enrol.

Key takeaways

• Tuition is not the bill. At St Peter's College, 2026 tuition is $30,190 but the compulsory all-in is $32,970 once the fixed charge and IT levy are added. Levies add roughly $1,600–$3,720 a year at the schools we checked.
• The top independents cluster tightly: Scotch $31,560, St Peter's $32,970, Pulteney $28,432, Walford $28,320 for Year 7; the mid-tier runs to Concordia $19,780, and the dearest Catholic college we verified, Mercedes, is $16,830.
• Schools publish on different bases — some a tuition figure, some only a "total", some a band across several years — so an "Adelaide median" compares numbers that are not the same kind of number. We explain why below, and don't publish one.
• We only quote what we can verify. Several well-known schools (Prince Alfred, Pembroke, St Peter's Girls', Wilderness) don't publish a readable 2026 figure online, so we leave them out rather than print a stale or invented number.

The verified numbers: what six Adelaide schools charge in 2026

These are the schools whose 2026 schedules we could read at source. We show tuition and the compulsory all-in separately, because the gap between them is real money.

Each all-in figure adds that school's compulsory fixed charges — fixed levy, IT levy, building fund — to tuition. St Peter's adds $2,780; Concordia adds $2,680; Mercedes adds $1,640; Walford adds $3,720. Scotch publishes tuition only and treats levies as variable disbursements, so it has no single all-in number — a real answer of "it depends", not an oversight. Pulteney is the opposite: it publishes only one "Total" column and no tuition figure at all, so any "Pulteney tuition = $X" you see elsewhere is invented.

The schools we could not verify — and why we won't guess

A "compare every Adelaide school" list sounds better than it can honestly be delivered, because many schools simply do not publish a readable 2026 fee online. Rather than print a stale or second-hand number next to a school's name, we leave these out and point you to the school:

• Prince Alfred College — the 2026 fee schedule is referenced on its site but the download link is broken; only the 2025 schedule resolves.
• Pembroke School — publishes tuition and total, but only up to 2025; no 2026 schedule is live yet.
• St Peter's Girls' School and Mount Carmel College (Catholic) — both have a 2026 schedule, but their sites block automated reading. Open them in a browser: St Peter's Girls' fees and Mount Carmel's fees page.
• Wilderness School and Australian Islamic College Adelaide — publish no fee figures online at all, and direct enquiries to their enrolment offices.

If a school you are considering is not in the table above, that is why — check its own admissions page for the current schedule.

The whole thirteen years, in context

Year 7 is one line of a thirteen-year bill. For the total cost of schooling in South Australia — fees plus the parent contributions and ancillaries (uniforms, devices, camps, excursions) that go with them — the best national source is Futurity Investment Group's Cost of Education Index 2026 (surveying 2,502 parents). For a child starting school in 2026 in metropolitan SA, it projects:

Read those totals carefully — they are not tuition bills. They bundle fees together with the extras families spend across thirteen years, which is why even a "free" government education lands above $110,000 (for government schools, most of that total is ancillaries, not fees). The National Catholic Education Commission has publicly disputed how those ancillaries are estimated. Treat the chart as "total household spend across schooling", and the verified table above as "what the school actually invoices". And note the trajectory: Futurity, citing ABS data, has fees rising at about 5–6% a year, roughly double CPI — so a Year 7 figure today understates Year 12.

Why we don't publish an "Adelaide average"

It is tempting to reduce all this to one number. We don't, for a reason that matters: the schools publish fees on bases that cannot honestly be averaged together. Scotch quotes a band across Years 7–9; Pulteney quotes only a total with no tuition; St Peter's and Walford quote tuition plus separate levies; several colleges don't publish online at all. A "median Adelaide fee" built across those would compare tuition against totals against bands — a precise-looking figure that is close to meaningless. We would rather show you six numbers we can stand behind than one we can't.

The geography, and the single-sex tier

The pattern that is reliable is geographic. Adelaide's dearest schools do not scatter — they cluster in the old inner-eastern and inner-southern suburbs, within about 7km of the CBD (St Peters, Kent Town, Kensington Park, Torrens Park). Fees fall the further out you go, and the low-fee Christian, Islamic and Catholic colleges of the outer northern and southern corridors sit a long way below the inner-city names. If you are shortlisting only the famous schools, you are implicitly shortlisting a commute and a housing market too — a daily drive shapes six years more than a few thousand dollars of fee difference will.

Adelaide's top tier is also more co-educational than Perth's: of the best-known expensive schools, Scotch, Pembroke and Pulteney are co-ed, alongside the traditional single-sex colleges. Single-sex schooling in Adelaide is not itself the premium — the Catholic system's boys' and girls' colleges are among the most affordable in the city. The premium is about which schools happen to be single-sex: old, central and endowed. We looked at that pattern nationally in single-sex versus co-ed school fees, and at how the sectors compare in Catholic versus independent school fees. If you are working out how to fund any of this, our guide to how families pay for private school fees walks through the options without recommending a product.

What fees cannot tell you — and what to use instead

Nothing above is a ranking of quality, and we will be direct about why: AroundSchools does not hold academic results for South Australian schools, so we cannot rank them on outcomes and will not pretend to. A $32,970 fee buys facilities, small classes, co-curricular breadth and a network; it does not, by itself, buy a better SACE result for your child. For outcomes, use the sources that publish them:

• My School (myschool.edu.au) for NAPLAN, enrolment and each school's ICSEA profile — our NAPLAN results explained for parents is a plain-English reader.
• The SACE Board for Year 12 merit and subject results.
• The school itself — tour it, with our 25 questions to ask on a school tour in hand.

And do not skip the public option. Adelaide's zoned government high schools — Adelaide High, Adelaide Botanic High, Glenunga International, Marryatville, Unley, Norwood International, Brighton Secondary — are why many inner-suburban families never look at the private list, and the zone you live in decides your access. Check any address on our school catchment checker, and see public, Catholic or independent for the wider question. It is also worth checking what runs near a school after 3pm — sport, music, tutoring, holiday programs — in our Kids' Activity Index.

Frequently asked questions

How much do Adelaide private schools cost in 2026? At the well-known independents, a Year 7 place costs about $28,000–$33,000 a year once compulsory levies are counted (St Peter's $32,970, Scotch $31,560 tuition, Pulteney $28,432, Walford $28,320), on 2026 schedules. Mid-tier independents like Concordia are around $19,780, and the Catholic Mercedes College is $16,830. Many Adelaide schools charge far less — the low-fee Christian, Islamic and outer-suburban Catholic colleges are a fraction of these figures.

What is the most expensive private school in Adelaide? Of the schools that publish a readable 2026 schedule, St Peter's College is the highest once levies are counted, at $32,970 all-in, with Scotch College close behind at $31,560 tuition. Some other well-known schools do not publish a 2026 figure online, so we can't rank them.

Do these fees include everything? No. Where a school publishes both, we show tuition and the compulsory all-in — but even the all-in excludes uniforms, devices, camps and voluntary building-fund donations. Ask the school for its full 2026 schedule for the year your child would start.

Why don't you list an average or every school? Because it would not be honest. Schools publish on incompatible bases (tuition, total, or banded year levels) and many don't publish online, so an "average" would compare unlike numbers, and a full list would mean printing figures we can't verify. We publish what we can confirm at source.

School fee figures are each school's own published 2026 schedule, read at source in September 2026. Thirteen-year totals are from Futurity Investment Group's Cost of Education Index 2026. Fees change annually and levies vary — confirm current figures with the school before enrolling. AroundSchools does not hold academic results for South Australian schools and does not rank schools on quality.