How much do boarding schools cost in Australia? This site will not invent a national figure. What parents actually pay for is a structure: tuition, boarding, compulsory levies, and extras.
The two lines that matter
Tuition is the academic fee day students also pay.
Boarding is the residential fee — a bed, meals and supervision. It is almost never bundled into tuition.
Weekday board is not full board. Overseas packages add CRICOS, health cover and guardianship. See the fees guide and international fees.
What a current PDF should show
- Tuition by year level
- Boarding by year level, weekday and full if both exist
- Levies, uniforms and camps
- What happens if a student leaves mid-term
- Whether a scholarship touches boarding or only tuition
City landscapes: Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane.
Treat any dollar figure you found on an archived website — including older versions of this one — as historical. Request this year’s schedule from admissions.
Extras that blow a tidy spreadsheet
Uniforms, devices, outdoor education, rowing camps, private music and interstate tours sit outside many published lines. Ask what is excluded from any “inclusive” sentence. Boarders still pay those extras. A regional flight schedule can exceed a boarding-line gap between two city houses.
How to compare three PDFs
Same year level, same boarding mode, same enrolment status (domestic or overseas), same extras policy. If one quote is packaged and another is split, make them comparable or stop. See weekly versus full and tuition versus boarding.
Scholarships are not a price
An award is an instrument. It may ignore boarding. Read scholarships explained. Do not subtract a rumour from a forum screenshot.
Research only
We do not quote fees. Contact the school. City notes on Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane are structure, not price lists.
The sentence to refuse
“They all cost about the same.” They do not. Year levels differ. Modes differ. Overseas loadings differ. Extras differ. Ask for documents. Refuse a national band, including any band you remember from an older version of this domain.
Research only. Contact the school.
Keep two folders
Folder one: handbooks. Folder two: fee PDFs. Do not let them merge in a downloads pile. The handbook will not certify a price. The PDF will not describe Saturday night. You need both. See how to read a boarding handbook.
Research only. Contact the school.
The five comparisons that keep you honest
Same year level. Same boarding mode. Same extras policy. Same enrolment status. Written, dated, from the school. If one quote is packaged and another is split, do not average them. Make the inclusive quote split, or throw the comparison out.
City houses often look expensive because day-school tuition is already high. Regional houses can look cheaper on the residential line and more expensive on flights. Compare the whole year. City notes on Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane explain landscape, not a price list.
Refuse the sentence “they all cost about the same”. Year levels differ. Modes differ. Overseas loadings differ. Extras differ. An archived band on this domain is a museum piece.
Scholarships change the maths only when the instrument says so. See scholarships explained. Overseas families need a different document — see international fees.
Keep two folders: handbooks and fee PDFs. The handbook will not certify a price. The PDF will not describe Saturday night.
Related: fees, tuition versus boarding, how to read a handbook.
Research only. We do not quote fees. Contact the school.
Extras are where tidy totals go to die
Uniforms, devices, outdoor education, rowing camps and interstate tours sit outside many published boarding lines. Ask what is excluded from any inclusive sentence. Then add the travel you will buy. That sum is the household year. This essay will not print it.
Overseas loadings are a different document. Domestic day-boy tables are the wrong quote for a student visa. See international fees.
Research only. Contact the school.
Same year, same mode, same extras policy
Those three matching rules prevent most dishonest comparisons. Add domestic versus overseas as the fourth. Add “written and dated from the school” as the fifth. Forum screenshots fail all five. Archived bands on this domain fail all five.
Research only. Contact the school.
City notes are landscape, not a band
Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane explain how those geographies split invoices. They still invent no dollar table. Tuition versus boarding is the vocabulary. International packages is the overseas invoice.
Research only. Contact the school.