The most expensive private schools in South Africa in 2026

The rise in the cost of education in South Africa continues to outpace consumer price inflation, with combined tuition and boarding fees at the 10 most expensive schools in the country rising by around double that of other goods and services on an annualised basis.

Barring some shuffling in the middle, TechCentral’s list of the 10 most expensive private schools in the country has not changed much between 2025 and 2026. KwaZulu-Natal boys’ schools Hilton and Michaelhouse remain the most expensive in the country, both – along with Roedean and St Andrews Grahamstown at number three and four, respectively – costing more than R400 000/year for tuition and boarding.

Since three of the schools from the 2025 top 10 list are yet to publish 2026 fee schedules on their websites – namely Hilton College, Michaelhouse and St Alban’s College – TechCentral has estimated their 2026 fees by applying the previous year’s annual percentage increase at each school. The publication will update these figures as soon as they become available. Fees at Hilton, Michaelhouse and St Alban’s increased by 5.8%, 6.5% and 7.5%, respectively, between 2024 and 2025.

The average cost of an education at a top 10 most expensive school is now just over R400 000/year, suggesting that the full five-year high school period will cost parents at least R2-million/child. All schools on the list offer boarding as part of the total amount shown, but additional costs such as application fees, levies and the cost of uniforms, sports equipment and social clubs have not been included.

While an education at this income level provides all the bells and whistles, the problem, as the perspective shifts to lower strata of South African society, becomes one of how to provide the most effective education with minimal resources.

Following the boom in the adoption of digital tools caused by the lockdowns of the Covid-19 pandemic, South Africa’s education sector accelerated its adoption of such tools as part of a blended learning model. This helps schools and higher education institutions support a larger cohort of students without necessarily having to increase capital expenditure on other resources such as staffing and buildings.

Individualised learning

“The blended learning model is a combination of classroom teaching and online educational technology, designed to meet the specific needs of each student. This combination allows for individualised learning and accelerated learning… Teachers are heavily burdened and there are certain tasks that can be facilitated by computers, such as route mundane learning of basic skills,” said Spark Schools co-founders Stay Brewer and Ryan Harrison in an information pack.

The proliferation of digital learning models has fuelled a flourishing ed-tech sector in South Africa. In December 2024, the TechCentral Show interviewed Matric Live co-founders – and winners of the South African App of the Year for 2024 – Kagisho Mashae and Lesego Finger. Matric Live is a supplementary tutoring app helping students in grades 8-12 prepare for exams using a combination of gamified exercises and video tutorials.

Read: Ed-tech start-up The Invigilator in R195-million funding round

In September 2025, TechCentral Show interviewed another ed-tech co-founder and CEO, Nichols Riemer, who created The Invigilator App. The Invigilator helps institutions effectively proctor and assess distance learning exams, ensuring their integrity and removing the need for learners to travel to campus or independent assessment halls to take their exams.

Other tools, like Maskew Miller Learning’s Maski, use a combination of artificial intelligence and communications platforms like WhatsApp to provide tutoring to grade 1-12 learners at lower cost.

At the extreme end of the lower-cost distance-first paradigm are institutions like the Saving Grace Education Group and the UCT Online High School that offer curricula aligned with the national department of basic education’s Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statement (Caps) in a fully remote setting. Since these institutions have no need for overheads such as buildings and sports fields, so they can provide education at reduced cost.

One promise AI holds for learners, especially at the lowest end of the income spectrum, is its ability to act as a supplementary teaching aid, helping educators cope with large classrooms sizes by facilitating rote tasks such as formulating assessments and marking.

A report compiled by a Google-led consortium on AI in sub-Saharan Africa and its impact on education found that AI helps overcome infrastructure limitations, provides personalised and diverse learning paths for students, provides additional support of multilingual and special needs students, and reduces teacher workloads. However, Africa’s growing digital divide, with many of the continent’s poorest unable to access basic telecommunications infrastructure, restricts the impact AI could have on rural classrooms across the continent.

Read: WhatsApp AI tutor a big hit in South African schools

“The digital divide is real, and while AI-powered offline and mobile solutions are addressing some of the infrastructure barriers, limited internet access, electricity shortages and device scarcity [which] remain substantial barriers,” said the report.  – © 2025 NewsCentral Media