Sydney, NSW Family Guide

Catholic schools for a city address

Living in the CBD and looking for a Catholic school? The Catholic school we list inside the city itself covers every year level, and several more a short trip away run on quite different rules. Which kind you apply to changes who decides the place, how the fees are set and when you need to be ready.

Inside the CBD. St Mary's Cathedral College sits beside St Mary's Cathedral and describes itself as a co-educational Kindergarten to Year 12 school. It belongs to Sydney Catholic Schools, the system that runs the Archdiocese of Sydney's systemic Catholic schools, so it is possible to stay at one school in the city from Kindergarten to Year 12.

Catholic schools within 3 km of the city centre in our directory include:

One name to keep separate: St Andrew's Cathedral School at Sydney Square shares the word cathedral but is an independent Anglican school, so none of the Catholic rules below apply to it.

The first three rows: one system, one set of rules

For a Sydney Catholic Schools school, enrolment and tuition follow a single policy across the Archdiocese.

• Who gets priority. Places go first to baptised Catholic children from regularly worshipping families with demonstrable links to the school's designated local parish, then to brothers and sisters of current students, and, for secondary colleges, to children moving up from the system's own primary schools. Catholic families from outside the parish, Orthodox and other Christian families, and families of other faiths or none can apply too, where places allow. The full order is in the Sydney Catholic Schools enrolment policy.
• When to apply. You can apply at any time, but the confirmation points come early: for a Year 7 place, colleges confirm applications while a child is still in Year 5, and primary schools confirm in the year before a child starts.
• What you pay. Tuition is set by Sydney Catholic Schools and varies with the area a school is in. Each school adds its own school-based charges, a building levy applies to the eldest child in the system, and brothers and sisters attract a sibling discount. A family that genuinely cannot meet the fees can ask the school about help, including Catholic Education Foundation bursaries, as the St Mary's Cathedral College fees page sets out.

The last four rows: independent Catholic colleges

These colleges were founded by, or still work in the tradition of, a religious order, and they sit outside the Sydney Catholic Schools system. That means the policy above is not the one that decides a place there, and their fees are their own: open each profile here to see what the college publishes, then go to its own enrolment page for the process and dates.

How the city's schools split by sector

Read the Catholic bar alongside the table above. In our directory the order-run colleges are filed as independent schools, so they sit in the Independent bar rather than the Catholic one, and the Catholic bar shows only the Sydney Catholic Schools members.

What to do next

• Shortlist from the profiles. Open St Mary's Cathedral College and any of the others in the table for published fees and location, then see them against the rest of the city's options on Catholic schools across Sydney.
• Keep a government school in the comparison. Government schools take local enrolments by intake zone, while Sydney Catholic Schools weighs parish links instead. Check which public school your city address is zoned for with our school catchment checker or the NSW Government's School Finder.
• Plan the working week. Sydney Catholic Schools publishes its own term dates and before and after school care information, and asks families to confirm dates with their own school.
• See everything in the suburb. Every school we list in Sydney itself is on schools in Sydney.