Sydney private school fees compared (2026)

Private-school tuition in Sydney runs from about $2,500 a year at a Catholic systemic college to $52,410 at Sydney Grammar — a twenty-fold gap, and the sector you choose moves the number far more than the suburb does. Below are the 2026 Year 7 fees we could confirm on each school's own published schedule, what "tuition" leaves out, the schools we could not verify, and the whole-of-schooling picture.

A note on sources and dates. Every dollar figure here was read from the school's own 2026 fee schedule in September 2026. Fees change every year, most top schools price Year 7 as part of a band (Years 7–8 or 7–10), and levies vary — always confirm the current, full figure with the school.

Key takeaways

• Sector is the biggest lever, by far. Sydney's Catholic systemic colleges set tuition centrally by socio-economic band — roughly $2,500–$7,000 a year — while the top independents cluster at $42,000–$52,410.
• Tuition is not the bill. Most independents add compulsory levies on top (Abbotsleigh +$2,400, SCEGGS +$950, Knox +$840, King's +$2,100). A few don't: Trinity Grammar is all-inclusive (device, books, camps in the fee), and Cranbrook prints no separate compulsory levy.
• "Year 7" is usually a band. Cranbrook, Knox and Kambala charge one rate across Years 7–10; Newington, King's and Trinity across 7–8 — so the Year 7 figure is the band rate, not a step that rises next year.
• We only quote what we can verify. Scots College publishes no 2026 fee on its own site, and Barker blocks automated reading — so we leave them out rather than print an aggregator's number.

The verified numbers: what Sydney schools charge in 2026

These are the schools whose 2026 schedules we could read at source. Tuition and the compulsory all-in are shown separately, because at most independents the gap is real money.

The two tiers are different animals. The independents at the top charge tuition plus separate compulsory levies (Trinity and Cranbrook are the exceptions, quoting one number). The Catholic systemic colleges set tuition centrally by the family's capacity to contribute — Sydney Catholic Schools and the Diocese of Parramatta each publish a low base fee that varies by area, not a market price — which is why they sit an order of magnitude below the independents. There is no single "Catholic fee": Bankstown's $4,818 and the city's $6,980 are both systemic, set by band.

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

• The Scots College (Bellevue Hill) — publishes no 2026 fee schedule on its own site; the latest confirmable document is 2024, and fees appear to be on request.
• Barker College (Hornsby) — its site blocks automated reading; it does publish 2026 fees, so open barker.college in a browser.
• Good Samaritan Catholic College (Hinchinbrook) — a systemic school whose 2026 fee tables don't render for us; the widely-quoted "$1,465" appears only on aggregators, never confirmed at source. It is plausibly a low systemic tuition, but we won't print a figure we can't read.

If a school you're considering isn't in the verified table, that's why — check its own schedule.

The whole thirteen years, and why NSW is the most expensive

Year 7 is one line of a thirteen-year bill. For the total cost of schooling — fees plus the parent contributions and ancillaries that go with them — Futurity Investment Group's Cost of Education Index 2026 (surveying 2,502 parents) puts a Sydney child starting school in 2026 at:

At $401,512, metropolitan NSW independent schooling is the most expensive in the country on Futurity's numbers. Read those totals carefully, though — they bundle fees with the extras families spend across thirteen years (uniforms, devices, camps, transport), so they are not tuition bills, and the National Catholic Education Commission has publicly disputed how the ancillaries are estimated. Futurity, citing ABS data, has fees rising about 5–6% a year, roughly double CPI. For the six-year secondary math and how families fund it, see what six years of private school actually costs.

What actually drives the price

Sector, overwhelmingly. Sydney's Catholic systemic colleges are run as low-fee schools by design; the independents span from small community schools to the $52,410 top. The national pattern is in our Catholic versus independent comparison.

Then geography — because a Sydney school fee is partly a property price. The dearest schools cluster in the harbourside east and leafy upper north shore, and fees fall the further out you go. If you're shortlisting only the famous names, you're implicitly shortlisting a commute and a housing market too.

Gender is a distribution story, not a premium. Sydney's most expensive schools skew towards the old boys' colleges, but it also has a large tier of Catholic boys' colleges well under $7,000 — so "boys' schools cost more" is about which schools happen to be single-sex, not about single-sex teaching. We show the same mechanism nationally in single-sex versus co-ed school fees.

What we deliberately don't rank

We publish fees, not academic rankings — our data holds no NAPLAN or ATAR outcomes, and a fee table says nothing about teaching quality. For results, go to My School. It's also worth checking the public option (a zoned government high school is free, and the zone you live in decides access — check any address on our catchment checker) and what runs near a school after 3pm, in our Kids' Activity Index. Use this comparison for what it's good at: knowing the market before you tour.

Frequently asked questions

How much does private school cost in Sydney in 2026? It depends overwhelmingly on the sector. Catholic systemic colleges charge roughly $2,500–$7,000 a year in tuition (set centrally by area); the top independents charge $42,000–$52,410. Sydney Grammar is the highest we verified at $52,410; the Diocese of Parramatta's systemic tuition is $2,532.

What is the most expensive school in Sydney? Of the schools that publish a readable 2026 schedule, Sydney Grammar is the highest at $52,410 (a flat Forms I–VI tuition), with Cranbrook ($50,478) and Kambala ($49,123) next. Some schools don't publish a 2026 figure online, so we can't rank them.

Are there affordable private schools in Sydney? Yes — the Catholic systemic system is designed to be low-fee, with tuition set by capacity to contribute; several colleges charge well under $3,000 a year in base tuition (plus a building levy and local charges).

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 and voluntary building-fund donations, and most top schools band Year 7 with the years around it. Ask the school for its full 2026 schedule.

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, levies vary, and most top schools price Year 7 as part of a band — confirm current figures with the school before enrolling. AroundSchools holds no academic results and does not rank schools on quality.