Key statistics
- A single Tier 1 upper secondary place consumes between 10 and 21 percent of a typical mid level expat package across the cities in the index.
- Singapore is the least affordable major city, where one place takes about 21 percent of a typical package, despite charging less than London or New York in absolute terms.
- With two children in Tier 1 schools, fees reach about 40 percent of the package in the least affordable cities, the largest single line in the family budget after housing.
- London and Tokyo are the most affordable of the premium centres, near 11 percent of the package, because large packages absorb high fees.
- Measured against local earnings, a Tier 1 place costs the equivalent of two to four years of a typical local salary in Cairo, Hanoi and Bangkok.
- Expat packages in Singapore and Hong Kong have fallen in recent years on ECA International data, sharpening the affordability squeeze even where fees were restrained.
Executive summary
Every annual league table of international school fees answers the same question, which is where schooling costs the most in dollars. It is the wrong question for a family. What a family wants to know is not the size of the bill but the size of the bite, the share of its income that the bill will take. A fee of 50,000 US dollars is comfortable on a 450,000 dollar package and ruinous on a 150,000 dollar one. The School Fee Affordability Index reframes the fee data around that ratio, setting the Tier 1 fee in each city against a typical mid level expat compensation package and against the local average salary, to show where international schooling is genuinely affordable and where it has quietly become the dominant pressure on the household budget.
The central finding overturns the usual ranking. The least affordable city in 2026 is not Geneva, London or New York, the cities that top the absolute fee tables. It is Singapore. A single Tier 1 upper secondary place in Singapore takes an estimated 21 percent of a typical mid level package, the largest share anywhere in the index, even though its headline fee of about 47,400 US dollars sits below the top of the table. The reason is on the income side rather than the fee side. Expat packages in Singapore and Hong Kong have compressed in recent years, with more assignees on local or local plus terms and fewer on the full balance sheet packages of the past, so the same fee now lands on a thinner income.
The premium financial centres that dominate the fee tables look very different once income is in the frame. London and New York charge among the highest fees in the world, yet they pair those fees with the largest packages, which is why a single place there takes only about 11 to 14 percent of the typical package. The schooling is expensive in absolute terms and moderate in relative terms. The cities that feel hardest are those where premium fees meet ordinary packages, a combination found in Singapore, Dubai and Hong Kong, and increasingly in the fashionable mid cost cities where fees have run ahead of the packages on offer.
The picture darkens with a second child. Because fees scale almost linearly with the number of children while packages do not, a family with two children in Tier 1 schools sees the schooling share of its package roughly double, reaching about 40 percent in the least affordable cities. At that level schooling is no longer one line in the relocation budget among several. It is the budget, rivalled only by housing, and it reshapes every other decision a family makes about where and how to live.
The third lens, local salaries, exposes how far international schooling sits outside the reach of the cities that host it. Measured against the local average wage, a single Tier 1 place costs the equivalent of two to four years of typical local earnings in emerging hubs such as Cairo, Hanoi and Bangkok. International schools in these cities are not a local product priced for local families. They are an expat and domestic elite product, and the affordability gap between the families who use them and the cities around them is one of the widest in private education anywhere.
The seven findings below frame the rest of this report.
- One Tier 1 place takes 10 to 21 percent of a typical mid level expat package, depending far more on the city's packages than on its headline fee.
- Singapore is the least affordable major city in 2026 at about 21 percent of the package, ahead of Dubai and Hong Kong, despite a fee below the absolute top of the table.
- London, Tokyo and New York are the most affordable of the premium centres because their large packages absorb high fees.
- A second child roughly doubles the schooling share of the package, reaching about 40 percent where affordability is tightest.
- Package compression in Singapore and Hong Kong is the main mover in the index, sharpening the squeeze even where fees rose slowly.
- Against local salaries, a single place costs two to four years of typical local earnings in the affordable hubs, confirming international schooling as an expat product.
- Families on local or local plus terms, rather than full expat packages, face the steepest effective cost and should treat schooling as a primary, not incidental, budget line.
Methodology and scope
The Affordability Index combines two datasets. The fee figures are the Tier 1 upper secondary fees from the GlobalSchoolGuide Fee Index 2026, the population weighted average of the five highest profile schools in each city, normalised to US dollars at March 2026 spot rates. The income figures are typical mid level expatriate compensation packages, defined on the ECA International model as the sum of cash salary, benefits and tax.
Where ECA International has published a package value for a city or country we anchor to it. Reported values used here include a mid level package of about 225,000 US dollars in Singapore and about 279,000 in Hong Kong, with Japan, India and Mainland China among the most expensive locations in Asia and the United Kingdom the most expensive worldwide on the ECA measure. For cities without a published value we model a typical package from the country band, local tax treatment and housing cost, and label the figure a GlobalSchoolGuide estimate. The affordability ratio is the Tier 1 fee for one child divided by that package.
The local salary lens divides the same Tier 1 fee by an estimate of the city's average annual salary. Local salary figures are illustrative estimates drawn from public labour market data and are labelled as such. Package and salary figures are deliberately reported as rounded estimates rather than false precision, because the spread within any city is wide. The point of the index is the relative ordering and the order of magnitude, not a spurious decimal. The underlying city level dataset is available to schools, journalists and researchers on request.
The headline index
Four numbers describe the shape of affordability in 2026.
The defining feature of the index is that the affordability ranking and the fee ranking point in different directions. In the Fee Index, Geneva, New York and Hong Kong sit at the top and the emerging hubs sit at the bottom. In the Affordability Index, the order is scrambled, because the income side of the ratio varies as much as the fee side. Cities with the very highest fees often have the very highest packages, so they land in the middle of the affordability table. Cities with merely high fees and ordinary packages rise to the top of it. This is why a family cannot read affordability off a fee table, and why the index exists.
A second feature is the gap between the expat lens and the local lens. On the expat package lens, every city in the index sits between 10 and 21 percent for a single child, a relatively narrow band. On the local salary lens, the same fees range from under one year of local earnings in the highest income cities to four years of local earnings in the lowest, an enormous spread. The two lenses describe two different populations, the relocating expat family and the local family, and international schooling is affordable to the first and almost never to the second.
The least affordable cities
The top of the affordability table is occupied by cities where premium fees meet packages that have not kept pace. Singapore leads, followed by Dubai and Hong Kong. None of these three has the highest fee in the world, yet each delivers the heaviest relative load, because in each the income side of the ratio is constrained, whether by package compression in the Asian financial centres or by the absence of the very largest packages in the tax free Gulf.
Least affordable cities, one Tier 1 place as share of a typical package
Percent of a typical mid level expat package, one child, 2026. GlobalSchoolGuide Affordability Index, anchored to ECA International package data.
| # | City | Tier 1 fee | Typical package | Share, one child |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Singapore | $47,400 | ~$225,000 | 21.1% |
| 2 | Dubai | $39,600 | ~$200,000 | 19.8% |
| 3 | Hong Kong | $50,600 | ~$279,000 | 18.1% |
| 4 | Geneva | $54,200 | ~$320,000 | 16.9% |
| 5 | Lisbon | $18,200 | ~$120,000 | 15.2% |
| 6 | Cairo | $14,100 | ~$95,000 | 14.8% |
| 7 | New York City | $53,800 | ~$400,000 | 13.5% |
| 8 | Shanghai | $37,800 | ~$285,000 | 13.3% |
Two cases repay attention. Singapore tops the table because both halves of the ratio move against the family. Fees are firmly in the premium band, with waitlists of around 18 months at the top names, while typical packages have fallen as employers shift assignees onto local terms. Dubai sits second for a different reason. The tax free Gulf delivers a strong cash salary but rarely the very largest total packages, since there is no tax line to gross up, so a high Tier 1 fee lands on a smaller total. Families researching international schools in Dubai should note that the Tier 1 figure describes the very top of a wide market, and the deep field of strong mid market schools below it changes the affordability calculation sharply.
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At the comfortable end of the index sit two distinct groups. The first is the premium centres with the largest packages, where high fees are absorbed by high incomes. London is the clearest case. Its fee of about 48,900 US dollars is among the highest in the world, yet on the most expensive expat packages anywhere, around 445,000 US dollars on the ECA measure, that fee takes only about 11 percent of the total. Tokyo and New York follow the same logic. The schooling is costly and the relative load is light.
| # | City | Tier 1 fee | Typical package | Share, one child |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Hanoi | $13,400 | ~$130,000 | 10.3% |
| 2 | London | $48,900 | ~$445,000 | 11.0% |
| 3 | Tokyo | $42,100 | ~$375,000 | 11.2% |
| 4 | Bangkok | $17,200 | ~$135,000 | 12.7% |
| 5 | New York City | $53,800 | ~$400,000 | 13.5% |
The second group is the emerging hubs, where low fees meet ordinary packages. Hanoi is the most affordable city in the entire index on the expat lens, at about 10 percent of a typical package, because a recognised British or IB place there costs a quarter of the premium centres while packages have not fallen in proportion. Families weighing schools in Bangkok or other deep, lower cost Asian markets find a similar pattern, with a single place taking an eighth of the package or less. The caution attached to this group is that affordability here is a snapshot. Lisbon, once part of the affordable cohort, has already moved into the least affordable half of the table as fashionable demand lifted fees faster than packages, and several emerging hubs are on the same trajectory.
The two child reality
The single child ratio understates the pressure most relocating families actually face, because the majority move with more than one child. Fees scale with each child while the package does not, so affordability deteriorates sharply with family size. A family with two children in Tier 1 schools sees the schooling share of its package roughly double, and a family with three sees it triple, against an income that is fixed.
One child against two, share of a typical package
Percent of a typical mid level package, Tier 1 places, 2026. GlobalSchoolGuide Affordability Index.
The two child line is where schooling stops being a budget item and becomes the budget. At around 40 percent of the package in Singapore and Dubai, a family is committing a sum close to its housing cost to school fees alone, before any of the registration, capital and transport charges that the True Cost of an International Education study shows add a further fifth to two fifths on top. The two child reality also explains a behaviour visible across the market, which is families splitting children between a Tier 1 school and a strong mid market school, or moving the whole family down a tier, to keep the combined load within reach. Affordability, in other words, is reshaping enrolment patterns, not just budgets.
Package compression and the Singapore effect
The single most important mover in this index is not a fee. It is the steady erosion of the expat package itself. The traditional balance sheet package, which grossed salary up to cover housing, tax and schooling on top of a home country base, has been retreating for a decade as employers move to local and local plus terms that strip out or cap those benefits. ECA International data has recorded falling package values in Singapore and Hong Kong in recent years, and the trend is broad. The fee can stand still and affordability will still worsen if the package beneath it is shrinking.
Singapore is the clearest illustration, which is why we describe the pattern as the Singapore effect. Its fees rose strongly in 2026, up about 10 percent on the Fee Index, among the fastest in the world. At the same time the share of assignees on full expat terms has fallen, so a larger fee is landing on a smaller and more locally benchmarked income. The two movements compound. A city can therefore climb the affordability table without having the highest fee, simply because its income side is giving way faster than its fee side is rising. Hong Kong sits just behind for the same reason, with premium fees meeting packages that have come off their peak.
The corollary matters for anyone reading an absolute fee table. A city can look like good value on fees and poor value on affordability, and the gap between the two readings is a direct measure of how far its packages have compressed. Where the affordability rank sits well above the fee rank, as in Singapore and Dubai, the message is that the income environment, not the school, is doing the damage. Where the two ranks are close, as in the emerging hubs, fees and incomes are moving together and the headline fee is a fair guide to the burden.
The local salary lens
Set against the local average salary rather than an expat package, the same fees tell a starkly different story. This lens answers a question the expat lens cannot, which is how international schooling sits within the city that hosts it. The answer is that it sits almost entirely outside the local income distribution. In the emerging hubs that anchor the affordable end of the dollar fee table, a single Tier 1 place costs the equivalent of several years of a typical local salary, placing it beyond all but the wealthiest domestic families.
One Tier 1 place as a multiple of the local average salary
Tier 1 fee divided by an estimate of the local average annual salary, 2026. Local salary figures are illustrative GlobalSchoolGuide estimates from public labour market data.
In Cairo a single place costs close to four years of a typical local salary. In the high income cities the same fee is under a year of local earnings, but still beyond most local families once tax and living costs are netted off.
The contrast within the chart is the whole point. In Cairo, Hanoi and Bangkok a single international school place costs between roughly two and four years of a typical local salary, so the schools are accessible only to expatriates on foreign packages and to a thin domestic elite. In London and Singapore the same place is under a year of local earnings, which looks affordable until living costs and tax are netted off, at which point even a sub one year multiple sits beyond most local households. Across every city in the index, international schooling is an income outlier, priced for a population that earns in a different distribution from the city around it. This is not a criticism of the schools, which are honest about their market, but it is essential context for any debate about access, and it explains why local affordability never appears in the fee tables that schools and surveys usually publish.
The market in context
The affordability squeeze is unfolding in a market that keeps expanding. On ISC Research figures, the world holds about 14,800 international schools teaching close to 7.5 million pupils, with most new capacity opening in the affordable and emerging tiers across Asia, the Middle East and Africa rather than in the supply constrained premium centres. That pattern matters for affordability because it holds fees down at the bottom of the market while leaving them free to rise at the top, widening the spread that the Fee Index documents and, through it, the affordability spread measured here.
On the income side, the direction of travel is the opposite. The long retreat of the full expat package, visible in ECA International data on falling package values in the major Asian hubs, means that the income against which fees are measured is under pressure even as the number of fee paying places grows. HSBC Expat survey work has put the average expat income at just under 100,000 US dollars, well below the mid level package figures used in this index, a reminder that a large share of internationally mobile families are not on the generous balance sheet packages at all and face affordability ratios far worse than the headline numbers here. For those families, a single Tier 1 place can take a third or more of total income, and a second child puts a premium international education out of reach entirely.
Independent surveys reinforce the framing. ECA International's own analysis stresses that schooling is one of three package components alongside cash and tax, and that the cost of benefits can exceed the cash salary itself in expensive locations. The implication for affordability is direct. As employers cap or remove the schooling benefit, the cost does not disappear, it transfers to the family, and the affordability ratios in this report are the measure of that transfer. The market is not only becoming more expensive per place, it is shifting more of that expense onto the household.
What it means for parents
For families, the index carries three practical lessons. The first is to budget against income, not against the fee table. The right question on a new posting is not whether the fee is high or low in absolute terms but what share of the actual package it will take, and that share depends on the city's income environment as much as its schools. A family moving to Singapore on local plus terms faces a far heavier real cost than the headline fee suggests, while a family moving to London on a full package faces a lighter one than its eye watering fee implies. The fee calculator produces a realistic all in figure, and setting that figure against the confirmed package is the single most useful planning step.
The second lesson is to model the family, not the child. Because fees scale with each child and the package does not, the affordability picture for a two or three child family is materially worse than the single child ratios in most published analysis, including the headline of this one. Families should run the combined figure for all children at the schools they are actually considering, and should look hard at the mid market field beneath the Tier 1 names, where splitting children or moving down a tier can bring the combined load back within reach without sacrificing a recognised curriculum.
The third lesson concerns the terms of the assignment. The difference between a full expat package and local terms is, for schooling, the difference between an 11 percent load and a 30 percent one in the same city at the same school. Families negotiating a move should treat the schooling clause as a primary term, not a detail, and should clarify whether the allowance is a fixed sum, a capped reimbursement or a full pass through, because the three produce very different affordability outcomes. Comparing two concrete postings side by side, fees, package and all, rather than reasoning from a remembered figure, is the discipline the compare tool is built to support.
What it means for employers
For the global mobility, compensation and benefits teams who fund much of this expenditure, the index reframes a cost that is usually managed as a flat per child allowance. Affordability is not uniform across the network. The same nominal schooling allowance buys a comfortable margin in London and a painful shortfall in Singapore, because the relationship between fees and packages differs by city. An allowance set centrally and applied uniformly will overcompensate in the high package cities and undercompensate in the compressed ones, creating both waste and friction at once.
Three responses follow. First, benchmark the schooling allowance to the local fee to package relationship, not to a single global figure, and refresh it annually, because package compression moves the ratio even when fees are stable. Second, recognise that the shift to local and local plus terms, while it reduces the headline cost of an assignment, transfers a large and rising schooling cost to the family, and that this transfer is a frequent cause of failed or contested assignments in the high affordability cities. Where retention matters, the schooling load is worth modelling explicitly rather than burying in a local salary benchmark.
Third, use affordability as a location input. The barbell structure of the market means that a cohort of assignees moved from a least affordable city to a more affordable one can see the schooling load on the family halved, improving acceptance and retention at no cost to curriculum quality. For employers weighing where to place regional functions, the affordability ranking in this report is a more useful planning lens than the fee ranking, because it captures the cost as the family actually experiences it.
The forward look to 2030
Three forces will shape affordability over the rest of the decade. The first is the continued retreat of the full expat package. As long as employers move assignees onto local and local plus terms, the income side of the ratio will keep giving way, and affordability will worsen even in cities where fees are restrained. We expect the gap between the fee ranking and the affordability ranking to widen, with more cities following the Singapore pattern of climbing the affordability table on the strength of package compression alone.
The second force is the divergence between the premium and emerging tiers. Premium fees will keep rising faster than premium packages, tightening affordability at the top, while the steady supply of new schools in the emerging hubs will hold fees down and keep those cities affordable on the expat lens, even as they remain wholly out of reach on the local one. The risk to emerging tier affordability is the Lisbon pattern, where fashionable demand lifts fees ahead of packages and a once affordable city tips into the squeezed half of the table within a couple of years.
The third force is the widening of the family income distribution among the internationally mobile. The full balance sheet package and the unsupported local hire increasingly sit in the same school car park, and the affordability ratios facing those two families differ by a factor of three. As the share of mobile families without schooling support grows, the average affordability figures in indices like this one will understate the experience of a large and rising minority, and the policy debate about access to international education will sharpen accordingly. The annual purpose of this index is to make affordability legible across that widening distribution, city by city, so that families and the organisations that support them can plan against the bite, not just the bill.
Frequently asked questions
Which city has the least affordable international school fees in 2026?
Singapore. A single Tier 1 upper secondary place takes an estimated 21 percent of a typical mid level expat package, the highest share in the index, because packages there have compressed while fees have stayed in the premium band. Dubai and Hong Kong follow.
Why is Singapore less affordable than London or New York, which charge more?
Affordability is fees relative to income, not the headline fee. London and New York charge among the highest fees in the world but pair them with the largest packages, around 400,000 to 445,000 US dollars, so a single place takes only 11 to 14 percent of the total. Singapore combines premium fees with smaller and more locally benchmarked packages.
What share of an expat package do school fees usually take?
For one child at a Tier 1 school, between about 10 and 21 percent of a typical mid level package across the cities in the index. With two children the share roughly doubles, reaching about 40 percent in the least affordable cities, before registration, capital and transport charges are added.
Are international schools affordable for local families?
Rarely. Against the local average salary, a single Tier 1 place costs the equivalent of two to four years of typical local earnings in emerging hubs such as Cairo, Hanoi and Bangkok, and still sits beyond most local households in the high income cities. International schooling functions as an expat and elite product.
How are the package figures worked out?
Package values are anchored to ECA International survey data where published, including about 225,000 US dollars in Singapore and 279,000 in Hong Kong, and modelled from the country band, tax treatment and housing cost elsewhere. They are reported as rounded estimates because the spread within any city is wide. The index is built for relative ordering, not false precision.
Does the assignment type change the affordability ratio?
Substantially. A full expat package that grosses up salary to cover tax and housing produces a far lighter schooling load than local or local plus terms at the same school in the same city. Families without schooling support can face ratios two to three times worse than the headline figures here.
How to cite this report
This report may be cited and quoted with attribution. Suggested APA reference:
GlobalSchoolGuide. (2026). School Fee Affordability Index 2026. GlobalSchoolGuide Research. https://globalschoolguide.com/research/school-fee-affordability-index-2026/
The underlying city level dataset, covering Tier 1 fees, modelled package values and affordability ratios for every city in the index, is available to schools, journalists and researchers on request through the contact page.
Methodology and data sources
This report combines the GlobalSchoolGuide Fee Index, our own dataset of published fee schedules across 50 cities, with expatriate compensation data and labour market estimates for the income side of the ratio. Fee figures are drawn from the International School Fee Index 2026 and the city fee studies linked throughout. Package values are anchored to ECA International where published and modelled otherwise, and labelled accordingly. External references are listed below.
- ECA International. Allowances and benefits, MyExpatriate Market Pay survey. eca-international.com
- ECA International. The most common expat benefits in 2025. eca-international.com
- CNBC. Japan and India are Asia's most expensive countries to send overseas workers. cnbc.com
- HSBC Expat. Expat Explorer Survey findings. expatexplorer.hsbc.com
- ISC Research. The International Schools Market in 2025. iscresearch.com
- ECA International. International school fee trends in 2025: currency shifts, tax impacts and global cost pressures, December 2025. eca-international.com
Figures attributed to GlobalSchoolGuide are drawn from our own published fee research and modelling and are updated quarterly. Package and local salary figures are estimates anchored to the external sources above and are reported as rounded values because the spread within each city is wide. Fees are normalised to US dollars at March 2026 spot rates. GlobalSchoolGuide is independent and accepts no payment from schools for coverage or ranking.
Related research and guides
This study is the third in the GlobalSchoolGuide Cost and Access research series, following the International School Fee Index and the True Cost of an International Education. Forthcoming companion studies include the Admissions Pressure and Waitlist Report 2026 and the Mid Year Move Penalty 2026.