CANBERRA, Jan. 16 (Xinhua) -- The cost of putting a child through private school in Australia will soon top 500,000 Australian dollars (398,000 U.S. dollars), a national survey has found.
The national survey of 13,500 families, released by AGS Financial Group on Tuesday, found that the average price of private school education per child in Australian capital cities will soon reach 475,000 Australian dollars (378,000 U.S. dollars) while in Sydney in Melbourne it would soar to 550,000 Australian dollars (437,000 U.S. dollars).
The survey revealed that overall education costs have risen 61 percent since 2008 , doubling the growth of wages in the same period, in the private sector followed by faith-based schools where costs rose 54 percent.
Costs associated with public schools, which are entirely funded by the government, have also risen with the cost of educating a child in the public system in Melbourne from kindergarten through to finishing school hitting 75,000 Australian dollars (59,710 U.S. dollars), 13 percent higher than the national average.
AGS, which provides education loans, asked parents to fill out the survey with estimates of how much they spent on their children's tuition fees as well as levies, uniforms, technology, travel, stationery, excursions and camps.
It found that privately educating a child born in 2018 in a metropolitan area would cost an average of 475,342 Australian dollars (378,573 U.S. dollars) compared to 295,214 Australian dollars (235,115 U.S. dollars) for a child born in 2008.
Faith-based education was found to be considerably more affordable; the education of a child born in 2018 in that system costing 240,679 Australian dollars (191,695 U.S. dollars), up from 156,104 Australian dollars (124,336 U.S. dollars) 10 years ago.
One respondent to the survey, a lawyer with three daughters in a private secondary school in Sydney, estimated that he was paying 156,000 Australian dollars (124,223 U.S. dollars) every year on education-related costs.
