High-fee private schools reap more than $6 million each in JobKeeper   

June 25, 2021
Sydney Morning Herald

Two of Sydney’s highest-fee private schools collected more than $15 million in JobKeeper payments between them, while others took advantage of government cash flow boosts to business during COVID-19.

Moriah College, which charges up to $36,000 a year, qualified for $6.8 million in federal government stimulus related to the pandemic, including JobKeeper payments and a $100,000 Commonwealth cash flow boost.

The King’s School, which charges more than $40,000 a year for day boys and up to $28,000 more for boarding, also declared it had received the JobKeeper stimulus in its 2020 financial report under the heading of ‘other income’.



The Parramatta school did not specify exactly how much of that other income was the subsidy either in its report or in response to questions from the Herald. However, its income in that category jumped by more than $8.5 million to just over $10 million. King's has about 20 per cent more students than Moriah, which is based at Queens Park in the east.

St Paul’s International School in Moss Vale also received $1.323 million in both JobKeeper and the cash flow boost, while Glenaeon Rudolf Steiner School on the lower north shore was given $1.96 million in government support to weather COVID-19. Both schools charge up to $28,500 a year.

Disclosures of the subsidies are included in the schools’ 2020 financial statements, which must be submitted to the Australian Charities and Not-for-profit Commission’s public register by the end of June.

Other NSW private schools also received the JobKeeper payment, including St Joseph’s College and The Armidale School, but their 2020 financials have not yet been published on the register’s website.

Most of the schools that qualified for JobKeeper were boarding schools, which lost revenue when international, regional and interstate students were forced to stay home due to border and health restrictions.

Governments provide money annually to subsidise teaching and learning at private schools, based on parents’ capacity to pay fees – King’s received $12.8 million in recurrent funding last year – but do not directly support boarding houses.



Moriah is not a boarding school but has an early learning centre that lost money when the government ordered childcare fees to be cut. The school’s annual report said JobKeeper “essentially allowed the college to continue employing many of our staff”.

Last year, Moriah – which is planning an $80 million development, and boasts the Lowy family as benefactors – made a net profit of $9,709,071 million and was given $9.4 million in annual government teaching and learning grants on top of almost $7 million in JobKeeper and cash flow subsidies.

Marc Weininger, a Moriah board member and the immediate past treasurer, said COVID-19 left many families struggling.

“Moriah College is a community school, and a significant portion of the surplus achieved in 2020 was due to incredibly generous communal fundraising activities, which enabled us to provide much-needed fee support to more than 200 students in 2020,” he said.

“As a result of receiving government support through JobKeeper, the college was able to maintain employment for all its staff. The need for the college to provide fee support continues throughout 2021 and beyond, as some families are still struggling to recover from the pandemic.”

A spokesman for The King’s School said it complied with the Australian Tax Office’s rules on eligibility for JobKeeper, which was given to companies that suffered a hit to their revenue of 30 per cent or more due to the economic downturn.

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He said the school’s eligibility was “largely a result of a significant loss of boarding revenue during terms two and three. Consequently, all monies received through JobKeeper were fully paid to staff in salaries such that no funds were retained by the school.” He declined to clarify exactly how much the school received.

The president of the NSW Teachers Federation, Angelo Gavrielatos, said private schools were given the money while public schools remained “critically underfunded”.   

“[Public schools are] not even in receipt of the minimum level of resourcing governments consider necessary to ensure every child can reach their full potential, we continue to see private schools showered with government funding,” he said. 

there is no better investment then sending your kid to the most expensive school.

doesnt even really matter about the level of education.

you just want it to be very very expensive, so your kid isnt spending his/her day being infected by the cry baby, learned helplessness mentality of sitting next to fat steve and fat janeens kid at lunchtime

aquascoot wrote on Jun 26^th, 2021 at 8:44pm:


You are evidently not familiar with the private school ethos.

I put my boys through Anglican private colleges. I have an extensive private library. They are only now exploring it, having left high school. They cannot talk to their high school peers about great books because noone else has read them.  They are exploring classical music, but again, nobody to share the experience with among their high school peers.  Art, ditto. History - ask  a student to sketch the difference between the 13th and 18th centuries and they will look at you incomprehendingly.  Education is corroded, expensive education corroded expensively.