Why Melbourne’s independent schools are booming

When Clyde Grammar principal Leanne Evans opened her school in Melbourne’s outer south-east six years ago, it was surrounded by empty paddocks.

Today, thousands of new developments have sprung up throughout Clyde North. The suburb’s boom has meant the independent primary school, which will open to senior students next year, already has a waiting list.

As Victoria hurtles towards a population of 10.3 million by 2051, independent schools are swooping in to cater to families moving to the state’s growth areas – including Melbourne’s outer east and west.

Independent school enrolments are expected to grow by more than 21.7 per cent in Victoria between 2025 and 2034, according to federal government projections, while public school enrolments are forecast to drop by 5.25 per cent.

In the last two years, 12 new independent and five Catholic schools have opened in Victoria, compared to 42 government schools. Independent schools expanded into 29 new campuses in that time, Catholic schools registered 13 new campuses, and the state registered an additional 15.

Clyde Grammar students Harssarah Chawla, 11, and Gursajan Singh, 12, were among the school’s first cohort. The pair took classes at nearby Casey Grammar School while Clyde North was being built.

Students even helped turn the soil when building at Clyde North began.

“It was great having our own school… instead of having to share the campus with a bunch of other kids,” Harssarah said.

This year, Harssarah and Gursajan will be among the first primary school graduates. About 60 students from other schools will join their year 7 cohort from next year.

“There were only 21 people there [when we started],” said Harssarah.

In Melbourne’s fast-growing west, Bacchus Marsh Grammar opened its Woodlea campus for primary school students in 2019. It’s now celebrating the graduation of its first cohort of year 12s.

Across its three campuses, the school has the second-highest student enrolments of any school in Victoria, Education Department data shows.

In 2026, Bacchus Marsh Grammar had 4026 students, and enrolments doubled over the past decade. Only Haileybury College boasts more students, with 4955.

Using The Age’s Victorian Schools guide, you can now track total enrolments over the past decade for every school in the state that offers VCE.

Deputy head of Bacchus Marsh Grammar’s Woodlea campus Sarah Hunter said the school’s main challenge was keeping up with demand as a low-fee independent school, with fees of $15,592 for year 12 students and a school development levy of $2548.

“We have incredibly long waiting lists,” Hunter said.

Year 12 classes will expand from two classes to five next year. In 2025, the school opened the Peng Heng Wong building with a library and classrooms. There is a plan for another three-storey build in 2027.

“We want to be able to support them, and so that means new buildings, and it means opening up our cohort sizes,” she said.

Other independent schools are also expanding quickly in Melbourne’s growth areas. Westbourne Grammar School, which has 2121 students across campuses in Newport and Truganina, plans to build a campus in Lovely Banks in the Geelong Growth Area Precinct, which will cater to 1500 students from early learning through to year 12.

Demographer Simon Kuestenmacher, co-founder of The Demographics Group, said the distribution of school-aged children across Victoria was rapidly changing.

He said as soaring property prices pushed Millennials out of inner Melbourne suburbs, families who might once have sent their kids to inner-suburb schools were now enrolling them in the outer suburbs.

“That means in those growth corridors, you must add new schools, and then you have the question of, ‘well, what type of schools are we building there?’”

Kuestenmacher said Melbourne’s socioeconomic makeup was changing, with a declining middle class and more families on either end of the spectrum.

Dual-income families in the outer suburbs were fuelling the desire for low-cost independent or Catholic schools, he said. Parents who attended a high-fee private school themselves but couldn’t afford to send their children to an expensive school were especially likely to choose low-fee independent schools, he added.

An Education Department spokesperson said enrolment growth in Victorian government schools was consistently among the highest in the nation.

The spokesperson said non-government schools appealed to families seeking a specific educational environment or ethos that reflected their faith, values or beliefs.

Deakin University associate professor Emma Rowe said the government had a responsibility to provide well-funded public schools in those regional and growth areas. “There needs to be a strong expectation that they will do that,” she said.

“Not just outsourcing to a tuition fee-charging independent school,” she said.

Independent Schools Victoria chief executive Rachel Holthouse said independent schools played an increasingly important role in growth areas.

“Between 2023 and 2025, this growth has meant an additional 13,000 students are now educated in the independent sector,” Holthouse said.

“Sustained investment in independent school infrastructure will ensure our schools can keep pace with population growth, ease pressure on the government system, strengthen educational choice and deliver high-quality learning environments for Victorian students,” she said.

Bacchus Marsh Grammar year 12 student Ellis Niyonsenga, who started at the Woodlea campus in 2021, two years after it opened, said it felt amazing to be the first graduating class.

“What influenced my decision and my parents’ decision as well to go here is BMG is a school that strives for excellence,” said Niyonsenga.

“Not only have we as a student body grown alongside each other, but we were also able to see the school itself grow alongside us.”

With Craig Butt

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