Pain for private school parents in South Africa

Tuition fees have increased more sharply in 2026 compared to 2025, with South Africans paying private secondary school tuition taking the biggest pain.

This comes as private education in South Africa is gaining ground, as citizens increasingly look for alternatives to government-provided education.

Statistics South Africa (Stats SA) recently did a deep dive on education inflation in South Africa, explaining that the education component in the CPI basket is updated once a year in March.

The agency found that tuition fees increased by 5.4% in 2026, far more than then 4.5% rise in 2025.

A more granular breakdown shows that tuition fees for primary and secondary education rose by 6.2% in 2026, up from 5% in 2025.

Tuition fees for tertiary education rose by 4.2%, faster than the 3.7% recorded in 2025.

However, the standout among this data was tuition fees for private secondary schools, which recorded the sharpest rise of 7.5% in 2026.

This comes as demand for private schooling is steadily growing, both in the primary, secondary, and tertiary education sectors.

The growing demand for private education has seen billions invested into growing the sector, with JSE-listed companies like STADIO, Advtech, and Curro expanding rapidly.

Over the past year, Advtech completed the construction of two new mega campuses in Sandton and Nelson Mandela Bay, with plans to construct another in Durban next year.

Similarly, higher education giant STADIO is developing its new Durbanville campus, which has cost the company R233 million so far.

Non-listed companies are also looking for a piece of the action, with Akademia in the process of constructing its R3.2 billion Afrikaans university campus in Pretoria.

Even non-education-focused institutions are looking to capitalise on the growing demand for private schooling. 

For example, the Jannie Mouton Foundation recently completed its R7.2 billion acquisition of private education giant Curro, with plans to run the company as a non-profit.

The graph below, courtesy of Stats SA, shows South Africa’s education inflation over the past decade.

South Africa’s education crisis

The growing demand for private schooling comes as the country’s education system finds itself in crisis, with education outcomes far below where they should be.

Recent research has shown that more than 80% of Grade 4 learners in South Africa cannot read for meaning.

In addition, in nearly half of all secondary schools in South Africa, no child reaches the intermediate maths benchmark.

Adjusted for quality, a South African child effectively receives the equivalent of about five years of learning after nine years of schooling. 

This is despite the government’s budget for this line item soaring, with the state set to spend R358.6 billion on basic education in the 2026/27 financial year.

In fact, aside from debt-service costs, education is the government’s biggest spending item, consuming roughly 13% of the state’s total expenditure.

However, education outcomes in South Africa do not reflect this, with many students leaving school and university unable to find jobs. 

In the 2026 Budget, the National Treasury acknowledged that achieving much higher levels of job creation requires South Africa to address longstanding regulatory barriers, including improving education and training outcomes.

While the country’s morose economy plays a role in the high unemployment rate, South Africa is also seeing a widening mismatch between graduate skills and those required by the labour market.

Coronation’s economics unit previously explained that South Africa’s failure to develop human capital has resulted in the country’s workforce becoming steadily less productive over time.

This not only limits the country’s growth, but also the economy’s ability to absorb new workers.

The firm said this has also translated into rising graduate unemployment in South Africa, with university students unable to find jobs as their skills do not meet the labour market’s demands.

South Africa, for all its spending on education, has among the worst outcomes among its upper-to-middle-income country peers, Coronation said.