Early indications suggest that independent day school fees will increase by around 6.3% for 2024/25. The increase for boarding fees will be similar at 6.1%. This is an early estimation, based on the fee communications made by 60% of UK independent schools at the time of writing (April 2024).
The increase is lower than 2023/24, which was 7.4% for day fees and 6.9% for boarding. But it is still above the 3-4% long term average.
The rise is due to increased teacher pension contributions and inflationary pressures on other costs such as salaries, heating and maintenance. It would appear unlikely that the average school is building a buffer for the anticipated application of VAT to school fees after the election; the effect of which I discuss here.
There are some other preliminary observations based on this sample;
- Only 14% of schools have announced fee increases that are less than the annualised RPI inflation rate of 4.2% at February 2024. CPI inflation is 3.4%.
- Less than 0.5% of schools have announced a fee decrease.
- 8% of schools have announced an increase of over 10%, with an average for these schools of 13%.
- There appears to be little difference in announced fee increases according to age group and school structure; prep, junior, secondary, standalone, all-through or part of a group of schools. Fee increases for International schools, however, are closer to 4.1%.
- School size could be a factor. Schools with under 500 pupils have announced an average increase of 6.7%. And the smallest schools with up to one class per year are increasing fees by 7.5%.
- Geographically, schools in the Home Counties are announcing marginally higher than average fee increases, at 6.5%. Average increases for schools in the South West (5.8%), North East (5.5%), and Eastern England (4.6%) are lower.