Alexandria, NSW Family Guide

There is no single Catholic school fee in Sydney. Sydney Catholic Schools sets tuition that varies according to the area a school is in, so the useful question for an Alexandria family is narrower: what do the Catholic schools nearest Alexandria charge? Both of the closest primaries publish the answer.

What the invoice is made of

The fee pages of Our Lady of Mount Carmel in Waterloo and St Mary's in Erskineville are built the same way. Read either one and the bill breaks down like this:

• Tuition, by year level. At Mount Carmel it steps up as a child moves through the school, so the Kindergarten figure is not the one you will be paying in the upper years.
• Sibling discounts. Each additional child at a Sydney Catholic Schools systemic school costs less than the one before.
• A building levy, once per family. It is billed to the eldest child attending a Sydney Catholic Schools systemic school, not to every child.
• School-based charges, set by each school for subject materials, excursions and specialist sport.

The whole amount is invoiced in February. When you enrol you choose to pay it by term, by month or by fortnight.

Why the two nearest schools do not match

Mount Carmel and St Mary's are both Sydney Catholic Schools primaries, a short drive apart, and their published tuition and building levy are not the same. So price the school you would actually use rather than a Sydney-wide figure. If you are weighing the two, compare the whole family total — each child's tuition after the sibling discount, plus the one levy — because a levy paid once weighs more on a family with a single child than on a bigger one.

Year 7 is a separate schedule

From Year 7 the fee comes from the secondary college. Brigidine College Randwick, one of the colleges on Mount Carmel's pathway, publishes its own schedule. It also changes from year level to year level, and its building levy follows the same eldest-child rule. If you are budgeting from Kindergarten to Year 12, read the primary and the college side by side.

What is not on the invoice

School-based charges cover what the school itself runs. A class outside school is a separate bill. If one is part of the budget, these are sports providers listed within 2 km of Alexandria — each opens to its own page, which shows prices where the provider publishes them.

Live from the AroundSchools directory — 5 of 13 kids' activity providers we list in Alexandria · correct as at 28 Sept 2026

If the fees are the obstacle

Both schools' pages say that no Catholic family should miss out on a Catholic education because of a genuine inability to pay, and St Mary's asks families in that position to contact the school office for a confidential conversation. The Catholic Education Foundation also offers bursaries for financial hardship, for Indigenous students, for refugee families and for children in foster care.

To see the government alternative for your street, check which public schools' intake areas cover your address.