The 50 public schools in Australia where parents pay the highest voluntary fees

The Guardian

28-02-2025

Many parents with children in public school are paying thousands of dollars a year in fees and contributions at levels rivalling the compulsory fees paid to attend some private schools, leading to concerns the principle of a free, government-funded education is being undermined.
At the 50 public schools where parents paid the most in fees and contributions, parents paid an average of more than $1,800 a student, an analysis of the latest funding data from the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority, provided to Guardian Australia by the Greens, reveals.
While government schools in Australia are tuition-free, they can request that parents pay voluntary contributions or donate funding towards the curriculum or extracurricular activities.
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Seven of the top 15 schools were fully or partly selective, despite selective schools comprising about 1% of government schools nationwide.
Canning college in Western Australia had the highest parental contributions, at about $20,000 a year, largely attributed to tuition fees for a high number of international students.
The Conservatorium high school, a specialist music high school in Sydney, ranked second overall, receiving an average of $5,928 a student in 2023. Its fees are largely attributed to instrument tuition.
More than six in 10 of its students (65%) are in the top quarter of socio-educational advantage nationwide.
The Queensland academy for health sciences and the Queensland academy for science mathematics and technology, both selective schools, ranked third and fourth respectively, with parents contributing an average of more than $3,700 a year.
Also in the top 10 was Paradise primary school in South Australia ($3,701); selective boys school Melbourne high ($3,627); the Queensland academy for creative industries ($3,602), also a selective school; the Western Australian college of agriculture in Cunderdin ($3,443); and Mitchelton state high school in Queensland ($3,299).
Nineteen of the top 50 schools were in Victoria, and of those, 17 in Melbourne, including the affluent areas of Albert Park, Elwood and Brighton.
Thirteen were in South Australia and nine were in New South Wales, including eight selective schools in Sydney. Queensland and Western Australia had five schools each in the top 50.
Compared with other states, NSW has the highest proportion of selective institutions, with 42 fully and partially selective high schools for 'high potential and gifted students'.
Its education department website notes selective schools, except for agricultural campuses, don't charge attendance fees but schools may ask parents to pay for 'curriculum-related resources', such as textbooks and materials, or to cover the costs of school excursions or sports.
The fees at many of the schools in the top 50 rival some Catholic schools and independent institutions. The Catholic schools Parramatta diocese, for instance – which represents 80 schools across fast-growing areas in Western Sydney and the Blue Mountains – charges $2,445 for year 7 and 8 students, ranging up to a maximum of $3,459 for Year 11 and 12 students.
And while the average tuition fee for independent schools in NSW is about $15,000, according to research published in the Conversation, 12% of schools charged less than $5,000 a student in 2024.
Associate professor in education at Deakin University, Emma Rowe, said there had been a 'privatisation creep' into public schools that was normalising parents paying for supposedly free education.
'It's such a problem on so many different levels,' she said. 'Public education should be free and high quality but funding is so stretched, it relies on private forms of funding from parents, which causes a huge amount of inequity.'
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She said inequity was particularly pronounced when comparing the selective sector – which typically catered to more affluent families.
Her research has consistently found a 'big gap' between fees at select entry institutions and their counterparts.
'[Select entry schools] typically cater to quite advantaged student cohorts … often parents have high education levels and come from professional backgrounds, and fees are much higher,' she said.
For parents, a voluntary contribution of a few thousand dollars was a 'huge win' compared with the $30,000 a year that private schools may require.
'The more selective a school system is, the more segregated it will be,' she said. 'Parents often see the low fees as a low-cost private school. But it means we have highly segregated public schools that cater to a very small proportion of population.'
The Greens spokesperson on primary and secondary education, Senator Penny Allman-Payne, said public school 'should be free', but families were having to 'dig deeper and deeper' as fees increased.
'Decades of underfunding means that 98% of public schools don't have their bare minimum resources. This is driving up competition and costs within the public system,' she said.
On average, the total amount parents were paying in public school fees and contributions nationally jumped from $409 in 2022 to $465 in 2023, representing a 14% increase, or $1.2bn in total, the Acara data showed.
This followed a 20.5% increase from 2021 to 2022, with an average of $337 paid in 2021.
Finnish education expert Pasi Sahlberg said public schools' websites where schools described parent payment arrangements showed financial contributions that were often explained in a way that 'may make some parents think that if they don't pay these contributions, their kids might have lower quality teaching and learning in that school'.
In contrast, it is against the law for public schools in Finland to ask for any funding from parents, including for school trips or similar activities.
'In real public education environments in Australia, all schools should have what they need to give every student the best possible quality education,' Sahlberg said.
'As long public schools' funding depends on what parents contribute to their annual budgets, we will continue to see inequities in Australian education systems.'