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Boarding School Fees Pass £70,000 For The First Time
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Fees now beat the take-home pay of someone earning £100,000
Fees at a British boarding school have passed £70,000 a year for the first time, according to a Times audit of 30 leading schools published this week.
Hurtwood House in Surrey crosses the threshold once its £1,000 registration fee is added to published boarding fees. Ten schools now charge more than £65,000 from this autumn, including Eton, Harrow, Westminster, Brighton College, and Wellington College.
That is more than a single earner on £100,000 takes home after tax. And the headline fee is not the full bill. Parents typically pay extra for books, stationery, medicines, exam entry, uniforms, and trips.
Day fees have reached £40,000 at the most expensive schools. That is roughly the average UK pre-tax salary of about £39,000. A parent on median pay could hand over every penny they earn, before tax, and still not cover one child's day place.
Why fees jumped: the 20% tax added in January 2025
The government removed the VAT exemption on private school fees in January 2025, adding 20% to bills. Schools absorbed part of it. The average rise across the audited schools is 4.7% for 2026-27, but some are charging 8% more, including St Peter's in York.
Alex Pugh, a chartered financial planner at Saltus, said private education 'is becoming a really significant decision even for high earners'. Saltus is a wealth management firm whose clients include fee-paying parents; its commentary reflects that market.
What the audit left out: more than 100 schools have closed
More than 100 independent schools have closed or announced closures since the tax came in, according to sector reporting. Pupil numbers at Independent Schools Council schools fell around 3.5% on a like-for-like basis, and boarding numbers dropped roughly 8%.
A parent on median pay could hand over every penny they earn, before tax, and still not cover one child's day place.
That matters because of what the policy was sold on. The first effect was the one in the Treasury press release: roughly £1.5 billion a year for state schools. The second effect is the one arriving now. The government predicted around 3,000 pupils would switch to state schools; sector estimates put the real figure far higher, and every one of those places must be paid for from the same public pot the tax was meant to top up.
Charitable status and the bursary numbers
Almost all the schools audited are registered charities. Eton College's accounts show income of £99.6 million in the year to 2025 and expenditure of £108.6 million, with its endowment funding scholarships and bursaries worth £9.7 million.
The 2026 ISC census puts the average boarding fee at £44,940 and the average day fee at £18,798. ISC members spent more than £1.1 billion on scholarships and bursaries last year, but only half were means-tested. The ISC is a trade body funded by member subscriptions, and its census data is self-reported by its schools.
Dulwich College said its top boarding fee of £67,416 applied to fewer than one in 10 pupils, and pointed to its bursary programme, including free places.
Legal challenges to the VAT policy are ongoing, with Christian schools taking a case on proportionality towards the Supreme Court.
