The invoice is the honest page
Tuition is the number on the homepage. The PDF is the number that arrives in March. Here is how to read the second one, without inventing a euro, a krona, or a deadline.
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If a school will not publish a fee table, ask for this year’s PDF before you tour. If they still will not send it, that is a fact about the school. Write it down.
Official sites are useful and they are advertising. The fee schedule is the part that has to survive a finance office. Read it before the film. Read it again after the tour, with a pencil. How to choose already told you that tuition is a starting line. This page is how to walk the rest of the document without a directory, a forum, or a well-meaning neighbour doing the arithmetic for you.
We will not invent a typical international-school price. We will not convert last year’s rumour into this year’s budget. When a number matters, it lives on the school’s own PDF or on the ministry or Board page that actually sets it, and it has a date.
Start on the school’s own domain. Admissions, Fees, “Join us,” a button that says Fee schedule 2026–27. Download the PDF. Note the academic year in the title and the date on the footer if there is one. Schools reprint these every winter. A beautiful HTML page that still says “from €22,000” in the hero and a different grid below is two documents having an argument. We have seen that. Use the grid, then write and ask.
Do not budget from:
Directories are useful for finding a name. They are not a finance department. They flatten capital fees into “tuition,” miss the bus, and keep last year’s sibling discount as if it were a law. If you see a number you like on a directory, open the official PDF and see whether it is still there.
For European Schools, the official guidance table lives on eursc.eu’s school-fees page, not on a blog. Category I is exempt. Category II and III are printed for guidance; the Office says the Schools cannot be held liable for that table. Confirm with the school. Lunch, bus and APEEE services are a different invoice. European Schools versus internationals is the longer fork.
Open the PDF. Make a list. Most honest schedules have some of these. Not every school has all of them. Absence is also information.
Application or admissions fee. Paid to have the file read. Often not refundable, even if the answer is no, even if you change your mind. Sometimes it includes testing; sometimes testing is extra. Pay it only when you can name the city, the age, and a leaving-certificate preference. Collecting application fees is how families buy souvenirs.
Registration, enrolment, or acceptance fee. Paid when you say yes, to hold the chair. Sometimes credited against tuition; sometimes not. Sometimes due in five or fifteen days or the offer dies. Read that sentence twice.
Deposit. A sum the school holds. Ask the four questions that actually matter: Is it refundable? When? Against what (the last invoice, damage, a re-enrolment you miss)? What happens if a posting ends in March? A deposit that “comes back at the end” does not come back if you miss a February re-enrolment date printed in a different PDF.
Capital, development, building, or “stability” fee. Money for the campus, not for this year’s teacher. Sometimes once per child; sometimes once per family; sometimes every year; sometimes waived for a third sibling and not for the first. American-pattern schools are fond of a one-time capital fee. Some British-pattern houses have none and say so. Some charge a building fund annually. Not refundable is a common official sentence. A child who starts in Early Childhood may pay it only when they enter Grade 1 — AIS Paris, on its own pages, has used that shape. Another campus will invoice it with the first term. Ask.
Tuition. The big line. Ask what it includes: lunch, books, a laptop, category-A trips, standard EAL, required sport kit. Ask what it does not. The same PDF often answers both, three pages apart.
Technology or laptop levy. Sometimes inside tuition (CAISL’s fee page, for example, puts a personal school laptop from Grade 1 inside the annual figure). Sometimes a separate first-year hit. Sometimes you buy the machine and they specify the model.
EAL / ELA / intensive English. Included, or a second invoice, or “the school may recommend a tutor outside.” Cut-offs exist. The language of the yard is the pedagogical half. This page is only the line on the bill. If the PDF is silent, ask in writing whether this child would trigger a charge.
Learning support, 1:1 assistant, therapy. Often the number that arrives after the first meeting. Some schools print “from” a monthly figure. Some will only quote after they have read the file. If the year only works with a full-time assistant, ask the price before you fall in love with the lake.
Bus. A different company, a parents’ association, or the school. Priced by zone, by one-way or return, sometimes only by email. We do not invent a bus figure. Ask for this year’s tariff and the route that actually serves your street.
Meals. Included, invoiced, or a canteen card. Mandatory in the youngest years at some houses; optional later. August may be half a month. Read the footnote.
After-school care, homework club, late bus. The question that decides the school if you will work past 16:00. Price it.
Trips, ski week, residential, “experiential learning.” Sometimes optional, sometimes effectively compulsory because the year group goes. Ask which, and last year’s range, not a promise.
IB exam fees, external-exam levies, “graduation.” Small next to tuition; real in the leaving year. Some PDFs name them; some wait until Grade 11.
Sibling discount. Read the order of operations. Alumni discounts sometimes apply after sibling discounts. A “family cap” on application fees is not a cap on tuition. A third-child percentage may not apply to capital, bus, or EAL. If the PDF shows a worked example, use that example. If it does not, ask for one for your ages.
Corporate or embassy tariff. A different column. Do not assume you are on it because your employer is large. Do not assume you are off it because you are paying the first term yourself. Ask which column the invoice will use, and who is liable if the third party is late.
On a sheet of paper, not a spreadsheet you will decorate:
That sum is year one. Year two may drop the capital fee and keep the bus. Year one is the year that surprises people.
If you start in November, read the late-joiner paragraph. Some schools pro-rate tuition by first month on campus. Some charge the full term. Capital and application are often due in full anyway. Moving mid-year is the suitcase version of that paragraph.
If you might leave in March, read notice and withdrawal now. Thirty days, a term, three months, a percentage that steps down after 15 August — those sentences are the ones that hurt. Some contracts run to the end of the year. Some keep the deposit if you miss re-enrolment. If an employer pays, ask whether you still owe when the invoice is late.
You are not looking for tricks. You are looking for clocks.
If two pages disagree — an FAQ with an old application fee, a tuition page with a new grid — believe the document that names the academic year you are buying, then email admissions and ask them to confirm in one sentence. Keep the email.
Imagine a first year in an English-medium day school. The homepage said a tuition band. The PDF added an application, a registration, a capital line, and a technology line. Lunch was extra. The bus was a zone you had not measured. EAL was “may be charged.” Sibling discount did not touch capital.
None of those extra lines is unusual. All of them are why “about the homepage number” is not a budget.
Now imagine a Category I child at a European School: tuition exempt on the official page, and you still need APEEE prices for lunch and the bus, and you still need the book list. Exempt is not “free at the gate.”
Now imagine a boarding house: the fee PDF is a different species (boarding, weekend leave, pocket money, the mountain term). Read that species as itself. Boarding or day is the life question; the PDF is only the price of that life.
Copy these, delete the ones you already know:
You do not need to perform intelligence. You need a PDF, a pencil, and the courage to believe the total.
When the paragraph you would write to a friend is only a brand name and a homepage number, you are not finished. When it includes the capital line, the bus, and what happens if the posting ends, you can tour. The campus will still try to sell you the lake. The PDF already told you what the lake costs.
Friendly orientation, not formal admissions advice. Always confirm dates with the school.
The letters on the leaver’s certificate matter. They are not the whole child. Here is how to tell them apart without a headache, and without pretending every door stays open.
16 minYou do not need a perfect algorithm. You need a few true things about your child, a boring list on the fridge, and the courage to ignore a beautiful campus that does not fit.
12 minSkip the question about last year’s average. Ask the ones that make a teacher’s face change. Then look at the corridor while they answer.
16 minA child can thrive in English at 9 a.m. and still be lonely at 11 if the yard is speaking something else. Ask about both languages before you fall in love with the science labs.