By Amanda Ferrari
As I write this, survey responses are still rolling in from across Australia. Well over 1,500 rural, regional and remote families have taken the time to share their experiences of boarding school, their hopes for their children, their financial pressures and the decisions they have made, or may yet have to make, to access the opportunities their kids deserve.
I have spreadsheets for days. I am reviewing responses every few hours, watching the numbers shift and the trends strengthen. But behind every percentage is a family, a community and a story that deserves to be heard.
And this week, I get to take those stories to the Daily Telegraph Bush Summit.
Not because I have all the answers, or because my experience is more important than anyone else’s, but because you trusted me with yours. Together, we now have something incredibly powerful….. evidence.
For years, rural and remote families have understood that boarding school fills a gap. We have known that geography can limit the subjects our children can study, the teachers they can access, the sports they can play and the support available when they need it. We have also known that a school being nearby does not automatically mean it can provide the right opportunities for every child.
Now we can prove it.
Among families who told us they would enrol their children at the nearest local school if boarding became impossible, 93 per cent still chose boarding because they wanted broader educational opportunities. They are not rejecting their communities or the people teaching in them. They are responding to the reality that smaller populations cannot always support the same breadth of subjects, specialist teaching, sporting pathways and extracurricular experiences available elsewhere.
As one family explained:
“While rural schooling has many wonderful qualities, our experience has reinforced our decision to send our children away for their secondary education. For us, boarding provides access to a much broader range of academic, sporting, cultural and personal development opportunities.”
This is not a conversation about public versus private education. It is about whether a child’s postcode should determine the opportunities available to them, and whether families should have to leave the communities they love and contribute to, to find those opportunities somewhere else.
Our latest findings suggest that up to 64 per cent of families would relocate permanently or split their family if boarding school were unavailable. That is not just an education problem. It is a workforce problem, a community problem and a regional sustainability problem.
We are talking about the people who grow our food, run local businesses, teach our children, work in mining and resources, keep emergency services functioning and help hold communities together. When educational opportunities disappear, or become too expensive to access, it is not only the family that pays the price.
One respondent captured this perfectly:
“Boarding is vital to rural and remote students. Our kids attended distance education for primary school so they had never been amongst their peers. Boarding schools provide them with the opportunity to learn age appropriate social skills that they can’t practice at home. Meanwhile we are at home producing food for the nation, something we can’t relocate for convenience.”
But here is the part of this conversation that we cannot afford to ignore. For many families, the issue is no longer simply whether boarding school is available. It is whether they can afford to keep choosing it.
Almost two-thirds of boarding families identify cost and financial pressure as a significant challenge. Among employed families, that figure climbs to almost three-quarters.
Behind those numbers are parents working off farm to cover school fees, sacrificing superannuation and retirement investments, giving up holidays and even taking on unpaid work to reduce household expenses. One family told us an entire wage goes towards boarding school fees. Others spoke about paying fees for more than one child while covering flights, fuel, accommodation, uniforms and everything else that comes with educating their children away from home. Some simply cannot afford to visit for a school event, a sporting match or even a birthday….. and others are now questioning whether they can afford to stay in the communities they love.
Even among families receiving or eligible for the Assistance for Isolated Children allowance, financial pressure remains a major concern. Support matters, but for many families it is not closing the gap. It is not enough.
That raises a question our leaders, politicians and decision makers need to answer honestly….. at what point does staying in the bush become financially impossible?
If the cost of educating your children means one parent must leave, an entire family must relocate, or a valued employee walks away from a regional job, then boarding affordability is not a private family problem.
It is a sustainability issue for rural and remote Australia.
One working family, now preparing to leave their community, shared this:
“Boarding has been amazing but unfortunately we simply can’t afford to send the remainder of our 3 children. The cost has just about crippled us. We have decided to sell and move to an area with more schooling options. A shame for our little town to lose another working family but education is a deal breaker for us.”
That family is not leaving because they do not love where they live. They are leaving because the financial cost of staying has become greater than they can carry. How many more families are quietly facing the same decision?
And yet, boarding school is still too often dismissed as something reserved for wealthy families, inherited privilege or longstanding tradition. We have always known how wrong that assumption is. We know the sacrifices, the financial juggling, the kilometres travelled and the emotional cost of saying goodbye.
Now the evidence backs that up too. Only 15.9 per cent of families identified peer influence or family tradition as a reason for choosing boarding school.
Access, opportunity and staying connected to home are driving this conversation, not privilege or legacy.
That is what I want decision makers to hear this week. If we want rural and remote Australia to remain viable, if we want communities to thrive and families to maintain their sense of place, belonging and identity, we must recognise boarding school as essential infrastructure. And essential infrastructure cannot only be available to those who can afford to absorb ever-increasing costs.
To every family who completed the survey, shared it, encouraged someone else to have their say or trusted me with a story that was difficult to tell, thank you. I am genuinely overwhelmed by your response, and I do not take your trust lightly.
These are your stories, your voices and your communities. I hear you….. and I promise to keep being part of the change.
