6 schools in South Africa charge over R300,000 a year

Private schools in South Africa have hiked fees for 2022, with many aiming to recover losses from a fee-freeze in 2021, to help parents cope with the Covid-19 pandemic.

Hilton College in the KwaZulu-Natal midlands retains its title as the most expensive school in the country, with its annual fees (which only allows for boarding) at R343,155 – up 3.5% from last year.

When BusinessTech first began to track the most expensive schools in 2014, Hilton College was the only school priced over R200,000 for boarding and tuition. In 2022, all schools tracked have breached that figure.

In 2021, three elite schools exceeded R300,000 for tuition and boarding, and a year later, this has doubled to six with Rodean School for Girls, St John’s College and Kearsney College joining Hilton, MichaelHouse and St Andrew’s College Grahamstown in that bracket.

The latest school listing is also notable for the first-day school to breach the R200,000 mark, with Kearsney college now charging R209,000 per annum for a grade 12-day scholar. Day school fees are also slowly escalating across the board, with at least 40 other schools now priced over R120,000 a year (or R10,000 a month).

Some schools which kept fees unchanged in 2021 to help parents manage finances during the Covid-19 pandemic have now pushed fees up to compensate, which has resulted in some increases above 7%.

Recent data from TPN Credit Bureau shows that private schools in South Africa have been heavily impacted by the financial pressures of the Covid pandemic on parents in the country.

As parents have prioritised paying other categories of consumer credit – such as mortgages or rent, credit facilities, secured credit and even unsecured credit – school fees have fallen by the wayside in many cases.

And while government schools give parents the option to apply for partial or full exemption from paying fees, private schools do not have this luxury and ultimately end up terminating contracts over non-payment.

This has left private schools in a precarious position, unable to meet operational costs and other financial commitments, TPN said. As a result, the credit bureau said that only 26% of private schools managed their budgets on fees collected in the last year, while 9% were forced to use their reserves to cover expenses.

The group said that as many as 65% of private schools have been forced to make budget cuts since the onset of the pandemic.

Note: The fees listed below are as they appear on the various schools’ web pages, and cover board and/or tuition only. Fees are for the highest level of learning available (up to grade 12). They include only the listed tuition fees/boarding fees and exclude voluntary or additional fees (where listed), and pre-payment discounts where indicated by the schools. We’ve included the annual increase for schools where we have historic data. Lists are not comprehensive as some schools have not publicly published 2022 fee schedules.

Boarding schools

Day schools

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