Going to school in Australia: free for PR families, expensive for whoever comes too early

First the reassurance, because for the skilled route it is the main rule: with permanent residency your children enrol at the public school of your neighbourhood under the same conditions as Australian citizens. Free education, with the "voluntary contributions" that schools ask for but may not enforce — count on a few hundred dollars a year in contributions, camp trips and uniforms, not on school fees.

The pitfall lies in the intermediate step

It becomes different when a family travels ahead on a temporary visa — for instance when one parent already starts on a work visa while the PR application is pending. In New South Wales most temporary visa holders pay school fees for the public school, up to around $ 7,400 per child per year (regional work-visa families have been exempt since 2025). Other states apply their own rules and their own exemption lists — Victoria exempts different categories from NSW.

The lesson is not "never do it" but "work it out beforehand": school fees × children × years-until-PR can completely tip the sum of an early crossing. Check the scheme of your state and your visa subclass before you book the tickets — the difference is thousands of dollars a year, per child.

For reference: fully international students pay $ 16,000 to $ 22,000 a year in NSW and Victoria. That rate doesn't apply to emigrating families on the skilled route, but it shows what the state charges once a child isn't "domestic".

Starting without English: the system catches it

Australia is an immigration country, and the schools are built for it. Children who don't yet speak English get EAL/D support (English as an Additional Language or Dialect) at the ordinary school, and for teenagers Sydney has a network of Intensive English Centres: new arrivals get around three terms of intensive English there before they move on to the ordinary high school. Enrolling should happen within six months of arrival — so put it in the same week as the school enrolment itself.

Practically, to finish: schools are allocated by home address (your local school is a right, another school a request), the school year runs from late January to mid-December in four terms, and you can start all year round. Whoever arrives in the Dutch autumn often lets their child calmly finish the current year and start fresh in January in the new one — that rhythm advantage is one of the underrated gifts of the southern calendar.