If you're weighing up a London day school, here's the honest short answer: budget somewhere between £22,000 and £35,000 a year for most schools. The most selective central London names run higher still, from around £30,000 up to £50,000 or more at the very top (Westminster's senior day fees, for example, are now over £49,000 a year). Then add another 10 to 20 percent on top for uniform, trips, meals and the rest. Fees already include the 20 percent VAT that landed in January 2025, and they climb every year regardless. This guide walks through the real numbers, what the VAT change actually did, the costs that never make it onto the headline fee page, and where genuine financial help exists if the fees feel out of reach.
The honest fee range for London day schools
Fees vary so much from one school to the next that a single average figure isn't much use to a parent trying to plan. Thinking in tiers helps more. Across roughly 328 independent schools in Greater London, the median day fee sits at £24,278 a year, with most schools clustered somewhere between £17,388 and £30,529. That's already 20 to 40 percent above the national average independent day fee, which the ISC's 2025 Census (as reported by Superprof and School Scout) puts at around £22,000 a year including VAT.
Here's a rough tier breakdown for London, all figures VAT inclusive:
| Tier | Typical annual day fee | What you'll find here |
|---|---|---|
| Entry tier | roughly £15,000 to £22,000 | Less selective prep schools, some outer London and suburban day schools |
| Mid tier | roughly £22,000 to £30,000 | Typical London prep schools and mid market senior day schools |
| Top tier | roughly £30,000 to £50,000 plus | The most selective, best known central London schools |
These bands shift every year, so treat them as a planning tool rather than a fixed price list. Always check a school's own fee page for the current figure before you commit to anything.
What named London schools are actually charging
Averages only tell you so much, so here are real numbers, confirmed directly from school fee pages or reputable press coverage. All of these change annually, and different sources sometimes give slightly different figures for the same school depending on when they were captured, so treat this as illustrative for the year stated rather than a permanent price list.
| School | Stage | Illustrative annual day fee |
|---|---|---|
| Westminster School | 13+ | £49,368 (2026 to 2027) |
| Westminster School | 16+ | £52,446 (2026 to 2027) |
| Westminster Under School | Years 2 to 8 | £35,013 |
| St Paul's School | Senior day | roughly £34,000 to £36,000 (sources vary slightly) |
| City of London School for Girls | Senior day | £30,247 |
| Latymer Upper School | Senior day | £31,095 |
Across London senior day schools more broadly, the median fee sits at around £27,090 a year. Typical headline fees for 2025 to 2026 cluster between £28,000 and £33,000, with a wider range cited from £28,000 up to £42,000 depending on the school. Prep and pre-prep schools run lower, with a London median of around £21,626. One thing worth flagging: Westminster sits well above the others at the very top of the market. Most of the best-known central London names are still closer to £30,000 to £36,000 than to £50,000.
The January 2025 VAT change, explained properly
From 1 January 2025, all education and boarding services provided by a private school became subject to VAT at the standard rate of 20 percent. That's the government's own wording from its official VAT policy page, and it applies to both day fees and boarding fees. Goods and services closely related to education, other than boarding, generally stay exempt.
There was also an anti-forestalling measure. Some families tried to pre-pay years of fees in advance to lock in VAT-free rates before the change landed. The government closed that loophole from 29 July 2024: if a school invoiced or took payment on or after that date but before 30 October 2024, and the payment related to a term starting on or after 1 January 2025, VAT was still due on the first day of that term.
One detail worth knowing if it applies to you: pupils with an Education, Health and Care Plan whose placement at a private school is required by that plan are protected, because the local authority funding the placement can reclaim the VAT from HMRC. In practice, that shields those families from the increase.
Schools can also reclaim VAT on their own costs and inputs, so the government's own expectation is that the net VAT liability schools actually face works out closer to 15 percent of fee income, not the full 20 percent. Whether, or how much, of that saving gets passed on in lower fee rises is down to each individual school.
Why fees jumped so sharply, and whether that was all VAT
The scale of the recent rise has alarmed a lot of parents, and it's worth separating two things that keep getting blended together in the headlines. The ISC's own data, reported via BBC News, shows the average termly day school fee was £7,382 in January 2025 including VAT, up from £6,021 in January 2024. That's a rise of about 22.6 percent year on year, sometimes quoted elsewhere as an annual cost increase of roughly £3,300 for a day school place.
But that figure blends the VAT change itself with ordinary annual fee inflation that would have happened anyway. None of the sources checked for this page cleanly separate how much of the 22.6 percent came from VAT specifically and how much was the usual yearly increase schools apply regardless of tax policy. So while VAT is clearly a real driver, it's not accurate to say the whole jump came from VAT alone.
Zoom out and this is part of a bigger policy story. The VAT change is forecast to raise £1.725 billion a year for the Treasury, money the government says is earmarked for state school teacher recruitment and improvement. The government's own forecast estimated that around 37,000 pupils, roughly 6 percent of the private school population, could leave the sector over time as a result. A related but separate change also stripped charitable business rates relief from many private schools in England from April 2025.
The costs that don't show up on the headline fee page
The number on a school's website is rarely the whole story. Before you even accept a place, most schools charge a registration or application fee, typically £100 to £400, non-refundable, rising to £1,000 at some of the most selective schools. You pay this per school you apply to, and many families apply to two to four, so it adds up before results day even arrives. If your child is sitting an entrance assessment as part of the 11+ process, there's often a separate assessment fee too, usually £100 to £300, sometimes bundled with the registration fee and sometimes billed on its own.
Once a place is offered, schools typically ask for an acceptance deposit equivalent to one term's fees. You normally get this back, or it gets offset against the final term's fees, when your child eventually leaves.
Then there's the ongoing cost of actually being at the school. Uniform and kit commonly run £500 to £1,500 a year, and can reach £2,000 once you count blazers, sports kit for multiple seasons, PE and swimwear, coats and equipment such as racquets or hockey sticks. Meals aren't always included in the headline fee, and where they're billed separately you should budget roughly £1,500 to £3,000 a year. On top of that, trips, music lessons, wraparound and after school care, and exam board entry fees at GCSE and A level commonly add a further 10 to 20 percent onto the year's total, sometimes as much as 30 percent at the most activity heavy schools. Some schools also levy a capital or building fund contribution, typically £1,000 to £5,000, separate from tuition. A sensible rule of thumb: budget the headline fee plus 10 to 20 percent for the real, full year cost, and expect it to sit at the higher end if your child does a lot of trips, music, or elite level sport.
Prep fees versus senior fees, and day versus boarding
One pattern holds up across every source checked for this page: prep and pre-prep years, roughly ages 4 to 11, are cheaper than senior years, 11 to 16 or 18, whether you're comparing within the same school or across the wider London market. The London prep median sits at around £21,626 a year against a senior median of around £27,090, a gap of roughly £5,000 to £6,000 a year. The exact size of that gap varies from school to school, but the direction is consistent, so families planning ahead for the 11+ should expect fees to step up noticeably once their child moves from prep into senior school.
Boarding, unsurprisingly, costs substantially more than day places at the same school. Westminster's own figures for 2026 to 2027 show a gap of roughly £20,000 a year between day and boarding at 13+: £49,368 for day against £69,282 for boarding. This page focuses on day fees specifically, since boarding costs and boarding school choices are a big enough topic on their own. We cover that separately in our guide to boarding schools in the UK.
Bursaries and scholarships: what real financial help looks like
Fee assistance in the independent sector is more widespread than many parents assume. Per the ISC's 2025 Census, as reported by Tes and School Management Plus, more than a third of ISC pupils nationally now receive some form of help with fees. Total fee assistance rose 11.5 percent year on year to £1.5 billion, with over £1.1 billion of that coming directly from schools' own funds rather than external trusts.
The average means tested bursary was worth £13,852 a year, up 7.3 percent on the year before. Nearly half of all pupils on means tested bursaries have more than half their fees remitted, and 7,590 pupils nationally pay no fees at all under fully funded places. There was also a 7 percent rise in the number of pupils receiving support worth more than 100 percent of fees, which covers extras like uniform and trips on top of full fee remission, not just the tuition itself.
The two main types of support work quite differently. Scholarships are merit based, awarded for academic, sporting, musical or artistic achievement, and are rarely means tested. Most scholarships these days are fairly nominal, typically worth only 20 to 40 percent of annual fees, so they work more as a status marker than meaningful financial help. Bursaries are the means tested route, and this is where the real financial support lives: roughly half of all fee assistance money nationally goes to means tested bursaries specifically, with the rest going to non means tested scholarships and discounts.
The London Fee Assistance Consortium and how thresholds actually work
A number of London and home counties independent schools, including Westminster School, St Paul's School, Latymer Upper School, University College School Hampstead, South Hampstead High School and Newton Prep among others, belong to the London Fee Assistance Consortium, a group of 17 or more schools working together specifically to promote means tested bursary availability at 11+ and 16+ entry. LFAC states that bursaries at member schools can be worth up to 100 percent of fees, plus allowances for extras such as uniforms, travel to school and trips.
To give a sense of how eligibility gets assessed, one member school's own published criteria suggest that families with assessable income and resources below roughly £107,500 a year may qualify for some support, and those below roughly £49,500 a year may qualify for a full bursary. Worth being clear though: that's one school's own illustrative example, not a consortium wide standard. Every school sets its own thresholds, and these change from year to year, so the only reliable way to find out where your family stands is to contact the specific schools you're interested in directly and ask about their current bursary criteria.
Is London actually more expensive than the rest of the UK
Yes, on the whole. London and South East fees generally run 20 to 40 percent above the UK average independent day fee, which sits at around £22,000 a year nationally, per the ISC's 2025 Census as reported by Superprof and School Scout. Within London itself, the general pattern across multiple sources is that the most expensive schools cluster in central and inner London postcodes, places like Westminster, Kensington and Chelsea, Hampstead and the City, while schools further out in outer London boroughs, or in the wider commuter belt across Surrey, Kent and Essex, tend to sit somewhat lower.
Worth being honest about the limits of this claim though. There's no single authoritative, borough by borough dataset that maps fees precisely across London postcodes. This is a reasonable general tendency drawn from commentary across several sources, not a hard, systematically published statistic, so treat it as a useful rule of thumb for narrowing your search rather than a precise pricing map.
What this means if you're weighing up private school for the 11+
None of this changes the fact that most 11+ entry, whether into a private day school or a state grammar, comes down to the same underlying preparation: solid English, maths, verbal reasoning and non verbal reasoning skills built up steadily over Years 4 to 6, not crammed in at the last minute. If the fee numbers on this page have you weighing private school against a grammar school route, or wondering whether a place is worth pursuing at all before you've costed out the extras, it's worth doing that groundwork early rather than after you've paid a registration fee. Our free 11+ practice app is built for exactly that groundwork, whichever route your family ends up choosing, and our guide to the best private schools in London walks through the school by school picture in more depth if you want to go further than fees alone.
Frequently asked questions
How much are private school fees in London in 2026?+
Most London day schools fall somewhere between £22,000 and £35,000 a year, with the median across Greater London sitting at around £24,278. The most selective central London schools run higher still: St Paul's day fees sit at roughly £34,000 to £36,000 a year (sources vary slightly), while Westminster's day fees are now over £49,000 a year, rising to about £52,000 for sixth form. All figures include the 20 percent VAT introduced in January 2025, and they climb every year, so always check a school's current fee page rather than relying on last year's number.
Do London private school fees include VAT?+
Yes. Since 1 January 2025, all education and boarding services provided by private schools have been subject to VAT at the standard rate of 20 percent, and headline fees quoted by schools now include it. Some SEN families are protected from the increase, specifically pupils whose placement is required by an Education, Health and Care Plan, where the local authority can reclaim the VAT from HMRC.
Why did private school fees go up so much from January 2025?+
Part of the rise is the new 20 percent VAT on fees, and part is ordinary annual fee inflation that schools apply every year regardless. The ISC's own data, reported via BBC News, shows average termly day fees rose about 22.6 percent year on year to January 2025, but no source cleanly separates how much of that came from VAT specifically versus the usual yearly increase, so it would be inaccurate to pin the whole rise on VAT alone.
Is there a difference between prep school fees and senior school fees in London?+
Yes, prep and pre-prep years are consistently cheaper than senior years, both within the same school and across the London market generally. The London prep median fee is around £21,626 a year against a senior median of around £27,090, a gap of roughly £5,000 to £6,000, though the exact size varies from school to school.
What extra costs should I budget for on top of the headline private school fee?+
Beyond tuition, expect a registration fee (£100 to £400, sometimes up to £1,000 at highly selective schools), an acceptance deposit worth around one term's fees, uniform and kit (£500 to £1,500 a year), meals if they're not included (£1,500 to £3,000 a year), and trips, music lessons and activities that commonly add a further 10 to 20 percent onto the year's total. A reasonable planning rule: headline fee plus 10 to 20 percent.
Can I get financial help or a bursary for a London private school?+
Possibly, and it's more common than many parents assume. Per the ISC's 2025 Census, over a third of ISC pupils nationally receive some form of fee assistance, with the average means tested bursary worth £13,852 a year, and some pupils receiving support worth more than 100 percent of fees. The London Fee Assistance Consortium, a group of 17 or more London and home counties schools, exists specifically to promote means tested bursaries at 11+ and 16+ entry, though exact income thresholds are set individually by each school and change yearly, so it's worth contacting schools directly to ask.
Arielle handles SEO and AEO growth at Pip, with over 10 years in the digital marketing space working with brands and founding her own projects.
