Private school fees soar above £50,000 a year

Private schools are to charge parents more than £50,000 a year in fees for the first time, The Telegraph can reveal.

Harrow School, Dulwich College and Cheltenham Ladies’ College are among 10 boarding schools that have increased fees for domestic pupils above the threshold.

Parents at the prestigious school face paying annual fee increases of around 8 per cent.

Across private schools, fees are rising at the fastest pace in 20 years, leading to warnings that the middle classes are being priced out of the sector.

Schools have said they are raising fees for the academic year that starts in September to reflect higher food, energy and wage bills, as well as rising teacher pension contributions.

Some school leaders have also said they are preparing parents for the threat of a Labour government imposing VAT on fees.

Prof James Tooley, the founder of an affordable private school in Durham, warned that the middle-classes were being priced out.

He said: “It is a crying shame to me that these private schools focus on a particular elite market. People at the lower end do need private schools. They want schools who are accountable to them.”

Other schools charging more than £50,000 for sixth-form boarders include Sevenoaks, in Kent, and Hurtwood House, in Surrey, where alumni include Emily Blunt, the actress, and Hans Zimmer, the film composer .

Britain’s most expensive secondary school is Brighton College, in East Sussex, which charged full boarding fees of up to £46,710 last year but has increased its rate to almost £65,000 this year.

From September, 90 schools in the UK will charge £40,000 or more for weekly, sixth-form boarding – or 38 per cent of all schools that have sixth-form boarders.

Eton has increased its annual fees by eight per cent to £49,998 next year. Winchester College, the alma mater of Rishi Sunak, the Prime Minister, is close behind, charging fees of £49,152 – an increase of 7 per cent year-on-year.

On average, private schools have this year announced fee increases of 7.1 per cent for Year 8 day pupils and 7.3 per cent for boarders. The average fee rise in the past five years was 3.1 per cent.

The last time average fee increases were as high was in 2004, when they increased by nine per cent. Those increases were blamed on a rise in schools’ contributions to teachers’ pensions and employers’ National Insurance contributions.

It comes as a separate analysis by Weatherbys Private Bank found that the average cost of sending a child to boarding school will be more than £825,000 by 2036 if fees continue to rise by five per cent a year and a Labour government imposes VAT on fees.

That is more than double the overall cost of £378,000 of private education for sixth-formers who completed their A-levels this summer, assuming they began their fee-paying education from the age of seven, said the bank.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies think tank has estimated that Labour’s planned VAT raid on private school fees will push up to 40,000 children into state schools at a cost of up to £300 million a year to the taxpayer.

Surging fees and stagnant wages have already begun to price middle-class families out of the sector.

Average boarding school fees now account for 56 per cent of the take-home pay of a household in the wealthiest 10 per cent of the country – up from 41 per cent in 1997.

Day fees account for 24 per cent of the disposable income of the wealthiest 10 per cent of households in Britain. That compares with 16 per cent in 1997.

Lord Lucas, a Conservative peer and editor of the Good Schools Guide, has argued that private schools cannot justify extortionate fees.

Responding to the latest fee increases, he said: “Most of what parents are paying for at the top boarding schools is luxury. The luxury is there because that’s what wealthy parents ask for – fees will remain astronomic while they do.”

Julie Robinson, chief executive of the Independent Schools Council, said: “The number of students boarding at independent schools accounts for around one in eight pupils. The boarding element of their fees is comparable to their state counterparts.

“Students receive a holistic education in addition to full room and board, and this is reflected in the costs. However, the majority of our schools are small, local day schools where the fees are much lower.

“Labour’s punitive tax on children’s education would price more families out of the sector and penalise those schools providing the most charitable benefit.

“We urge Labour to work with us to build on the good work already being done in the sector rather than the party penalising parents for their choices.”