• UCT Online High School has launched a report detailing what it costs nowadays to send your children to high school.
• The report provides examples, case studies and insights into how you should go about choosing the right high school according to your monthly income and expenses.
• Finally, the school has also devised a simple calculator to help parents compare prices of school fees and hidden costs of schooling with their available options.

There is no doubt about it, paying for the schooling of your children is only getting more expensive. Tough economic conditions worldwide, and in South Africa specifically have parents looking for new ways to save and cheaper alternatives to mainstream education.

One of these alternatives is online education. An industry that saw its origins in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent hard lockdowns. It is still a burgeoning field, but one with a promising future.

One of the loudest names in the industry is the UCT Online High School, a subsidiary of the University of Cape Town that specifically looks towards high school education in an only online format.

It launched its first academic year in 2022, and while the school had a somewhat rocky start according to some, it says it is tightening up the ship in 2023 as it expects to graduate its first fully-online matric class.

No doubt in efforts to sway struggling parents to its cause (as the school offers matric certificates from the Cambridge International Curriculum to the National Senior Certificate for competitive monthly fees), UCT Online High School recently launched a high school fees calculator, as well as a report on the cost of high school in South Africa.

The report is titled “The Real Cost of High School,” and can be found here. UCT Online High describes it as a “guide focusing primarily on the real financial cost of high school options in South Africa, taking all the expenses into account.”

“It takes a pragmatic approach to addressing the challenges associated with the rising cost of high school in South Africa, and it provides practical guidance through associated tools.”

The paper was curated by UCT Online High School’s Martin Hall, Emeritus Professor at the UCT Graduate School of Business and Strategic Advisor for Valenture Institute, and Thomas Wrigley, Blended Learning Specialist and Education Researcher at Valenture Institute.

“School is expensive — but it’s not an expense. It’s one of the most powerful investments you can make, with the highest returns for your child. Access to schooling is also a constitutional right and all families with a monthly income below defined thresholds are eligible for exemption from school fee,” reads the report.

Further it outlines “four steps that you can follow to align your options with your available income and to narrow your choices to those that are within your means.”

These steps include beginning by drawing up a family budget, by including monthly earnings and expenses, and listing any “big ticket items” you are planning to spend on in the next 12 months.

Next is to draw up a list of schools that are potentially affordable according to your budget. Here the report sets out some insights and examples. One of which is that having savings and investment plans, especially those that are targetting towards an education will widen your scope of schools beyond zero-fee public institutions.

However, it makes it clear that new choice like TENEO School and UCT Online High are also available.

Step three includes calculating “the real cost” of education. This cost is all the little expenses that mount up outside of the monthly school fees. Before choosing a school you should ask institutions about these costs.

These include stationary, school uniforms, computers, text books, travel costs, exam fees, extramural fees, annual fee increases, etc.

With all of this information at hand, you can finally make your choice.

Finally, to help families to calculate the “real cost”, UCT Online High has launched an online calculator where parents can input their income, as well as all the costs they will be facing when looking to enroll their children. The “calculator” is basically an Excel spreadsheet that tallies up all the costs for you.

While it doesn’t do anything too special, it could help households organise their monthly expenses and let them compare this with average monthly school costs and “hidden costs.” It also makes sure to add a cheeky “online school hidden costs” section where you can compare just how much less you will be paying for your child to be educated online at home.

In the end it is up to the parents to choose what is best for their children, and for their own economic well being. But this report and calculator could hopefully point someone in the best direction for them.

[Image – Provided]