Wealthy British parents are turning to boarding schools in continental Europe as rising private school fees push families to look for cheaper options abroad.
German and Swiss institutions have reported rises in the number of queries from British parents who face higher fees at home, after the Labour government imposed 20% VAT on private education from January.
Jamie Perfect, the director of the International School of Bremen in northern Germany, said the school had been “inundated” with requests.
“The British market has always been our biggest competitor,” he said. “We’ve got a very competitive price compared with UK schools. We sort of had it before this happened, but now even more – on average we are about £15,000 less than a UK boarding school and our students get their own rooms. There is a market and it is getting bigger by the month.”
The school, which is a nonprofit, charges fees ranging from €12,500 a year for early learning to secondary school fees of up to €18,700 a year.
“This academic year, British parents are even more interested,” Perfect added. “Traditional boarding school fairs are now looking to invite more European schools because they have been asked: ‘are there alternatives?’ These are fairs that would normally be completely British.”
The addition of VAT to school fees was a Labour party manifesto commitment at the 2024 general electionfirst. Ministers said the revenue would be used in part to recruit an additional 6,500 teachers for state schools.
The move was met with a wave of legal challenges, though they were overruled by the high court this summer.
Many private schools initially cut fees slightly to shield parents from the immediate rise, but on average they have risen by 22.6% compared with last year, according to analysis by the Independent Schools Council (ISC). The average fee per term for a UK day school stood at £7,382 in January, the ISC found, compared with £6,021 last year, meaning about £22,100 for a year’s fees.
Some parents tried to avoid the VAT charge by paying fees before the increase, but tax experts have said that money could be clawed back by HMRC.
Perfect said: “We are mainly hearing from the ‘lower tier’ parents who were struggling with the costs, who are now looking for affordable alternatives with the same price if they had a scholarship.”
The International School of Bremen in Germany is more competitive in terms of fees in a growing European market. Photograph: imageBROKER/Shutterstock
Tom Shennan-Barker, the senior head of admissions at St George’s International school in Switzerland, said rises in fees were adding to a growing wave of interest among wealthy British parents looking to educate their children abroad.
“In the last two years, we’ve seen more families actually taking the leap and moving into the area, either on the shores of Lake Geneva or to nearby mountain villages,” he said.
St George’s fees for its senior school range from 31,400 Swiss francs (£29,319) to 48,250 francs (£45,056) a year for day students.
“We’ve also seen students transferring out of top, well-known UK schools to become boarding students, trying to achieve a balance between a world-class education and the exceptional opportunities that the Swiss outdoors has to offer,” Shennan-Barker said.
Growth in the market for international education is drawing in huge investors: this week, the private equity group CVC struck a deal to buy a 20% stake in an international schools group that valued it at €7bn.
The International Schools Partnership (ISP), which operates more than 100 schools in 25 countries, is worth more than three times what it was four years ago, according to the Financial Times, which first reported on the deal.
Meanwhile, Brighton College, one of the leading private schools in the UK, is preparing to open schools in Spain and Italy as it seeks to cater to affluent families leaving the country.
The independent school, which charges its senior school day students in the UK £3,500 a term, is opening schools in Madrid, Rome and Lisbon from September 2027 for boys and girls aged 13-18, with admissions opening from January 2026.
It has also said that it was considering a school in Milan, a popular destination for former UK residents who have claimed non-dom status. In the city, they can opt to pay a flat tax rate of €200,000 (£174,558) to avoid Italian tax on overseas earnings.
The number of Italian children at British private schools with parents living in the UK fell 11% from 1,372 in January 2024 to 1,223 in January this year, according to a census carried out by the Independent Schools Council. The number of Spanish students fell by 13% from 1,402 to 1,220.
However, the number of US pupils with parents living in the UK increased from 4,367 to 4,728 over the same period. Those from China grew from 4,551 to 4,701.
Eva Ghewij, the director of admissions at Beau Soleil, an international boarding school in Switzerland, added that the introduction of VAT on private school fees in the UK had prompted many parents to reassess the value they were getting from Britain’s educational system.
“It has made parents think about any other options – they get inspired by other countries and think: why not elsewhere?” she said.
“Legacy-wise, people were just automatically sending their children to the same school they went to but now there is a bit more variety out there.”
Beau Soleil charges annual fees for boarding and tuition of 132,390 Swiss francs (£123,644) for its grades 6 to 10 (11- to 16-year-olds), rising to 143,390 francs (£133,925) for its grades 11 and 12 (16- to 18-year-olds).
“We have just over 300 students and 62 nationalities, and each year we see movement, with some countries are a bit more active than others,” Ghewij added.
“This has just planted a seed in people’s minds there are other options out there as well.”
