Shanghai international school fees: the real 2026 bill

For a school-age child at one of Shanghai's major international schools, published 2026–27 tuition runs ¥246,000–412,000 a year, and the first year adds ¥20,000–65,000 in one-time fees before bus and lunch. Bilingual schools run roughly ¥100,000–250,000, public-school international divisions ¥68,000–156,000, and the national schools far less. This guide lists the published numbers, school by school, and the extras the fee pages bury.

Every figure below comes from the school's own published fee schedule — we collected and cross-checked them in July 2026. Schools update these pages every spring, so treat this as your budgeting map and confirm the current schedule with the school before you sign anything. For what each school type is and who may enrol, start with the full map of Shanghai school types.

What tuition costs, school by school

Three reading notes. Every school prices by grade band, so the low end of a range is nursery or kindergarten and the high end is the final years — a school-age child (Grade 1 up) at the standalone foreign-passport schools starts around ¥210,000, whatever the range's low end suggests; the far cheaper route for a foreign-passport or Hong Kong/Macau/Taiwan child is the international divisions attached to elite Chinese schools (FDIS, SHSID, Jincai). Some schools publish per semester (one school year = two semesters); the table shows annual figures. And a few schools had not posted a 2026–27 schedule as of July 2026 — their rows carry the year their published figures actually cover.

The first-year bill is bigger than the tuition line

Fee pages lead with tuition, but four other categories decide what you actually transfer in year one:

• Application fees: ¥1,000–4,500, non-refundable, at almost every school (YK Pao and Hiba Academy state they charge none).
• Refundable deposits (often called a resource fee or seat deposit): ¥15,000–25,000 at most internationals, held until your child leaves. The German School is the outlier — ¥75,000 per child if you pay the fees yourself, ¥125,000 if an employer does.
• One-time non-refundable fees (capital, enrolment, entry): ¥15,000–65,000. SAS sits at the top: a ¥32,000 enrolment fee plus a ¥28,000–33,000 entry fee. Concordia and SCIS charge ¥25,000 (SCIS then ¥5,000 every following year); Dulwich splits ¥15,000 refundable + ¥15,000 non-refundable.
• Language support, where a child is assessed as needing it: typically a one-time ¥20,000 (Dulwich, Concordia, YCIS, SCIS — SCIS refunds it if the assessment shows no need), or an annual charge at the national schools (German School ¥30,000 a year for German-as-a-foreign-language; Lycée Français ¥10,600–34,000 a year for its French-support stream).

Then the running extras: school bus ¥12,000–24,300 a year at the big internationals (a fraction of that at the public divisions — SHSID charges ¥5,500 per semester), lunch roughly ¥22–49 a meal where it's billed separately, uniforms, and trips.

What's included differs as much as the price. Dulwich and Wellington include public-exam fees; Britannica includes exam entry from Year 10. Most schools charge everything else separately — so a cheaper sticker is not always the cheaper school.

SCIS deserves a longer note here, because its pricing model is genuinely different. It is a non-profit — in the school's own words, "governed by a self-perpetuating board of directors and overseen by the International Schools Foundation … completely funded through student tuition and fees" — and its 2026–27 tuition bundles nearly everything other schools bill line by line: on-campus lunch, door-to-door bus, a uniform set, school-run after-school activities, all compulsory travel including China trips, and a MacBook for Grades 6–12, with VAT included in the published figure. For a family budgeting a multi-year stay, that makes the annual outlay unusually predictable: the sticker is close to the real total, where at most schools the sticker is the starting point. The honest caveats, from the same fee page: the one-time fees still apply (¥3,000 application, ¥25,000 first-year capital fee then ¥5,000 each following year, ¥20,000 seat deposit credited against tuition), student-support programmes are charged separately, and external exam fees — SAT, ACT, IB — are explicitly the parents' responsibility.

The discounts schools actually publish

These are printed on the fee pages, so you can simply ask for them:

If your employer pays, none of this matters to your wallet — but check the package's cap against the first-year total above, not the tuition line, and note some schools price by payer: the German School's deposit and the Lycée's construction fee are both higher when a company pays.

The cheaper tiers, and the catch

The gap between tiers is real money: a Japanese elementary place costs about ¥30,000 a year — roughly a tenth of the major English-medium schools — and the Korean School, SHSID, Jincai and FDIS all sit under ¥160,000. FDIS is worth singling out: ¥76,000 flat for Grades 1 through 12 at an English-medium division attached to one of Shanghai's top high schools, open to foreign-passport and Hong Kong/Macau/Taiwan children (and waiver-letter holders) who pass its entrance exam.

The catch is never price; it is eligibility and fit. The national schools teach their home curriculum in their home language; the international divisions admit foreign and Hong Kong/Macau/Taiwan passport holders and run at Chinese-school rigour; the bilingual schools keep a Chinese national-curriculum core, and at the compulsory stage their admission runs through Shanghai's school-lottery system rather than a rolling international-admissions office. Which of these your child can use, and should, is the first half of the decision — the school-types map walks it, and why the school decision comes before the apartment explains the sequencing.

Six questions for the finance office

1. Which school year does this schedule cover? Several schools' pages still show last year's rates; one school's English page was six years stale while its current schedule sat on another language's page.
2. Per year or per semester? Chinese-system schools mostly publish per semester; doubling is on you.
3. What exactly is included — exam fees, EAL, lunch, bus, uniforms, trips?
4. Which payments come back? Deposits normally return when you leave; capital, enrolment and application fees don't. Ask for the refund rules in writing — the Korean School publishes them (100% of tuition back if you cancel three-plus days before term), while SHSID's tuition is a lump sum and generally non-refundable.
5. Which fees recur? SCIS's capital fee is ¥25,000 once, then ¥5,000 every year; Livingston adds a ¥2,000 technology fee annually.
6. What did this schedule look like last year? Fees move: Livingston's rose exactly 5% across every band this year, and Harrow's current schedule is a large step up from its ~2023/24 one. Budget for increases over a multi-year stay.

More in this series: the full map of school types and who each admits is live; guides to eligibility in full, the Japanese, Korean and European schools, and IB vs A-Level vs AP in Shanghai are coming and will be linked here.

Sources & last verified (July 2026):

• Foreign-passport school tuition and fees — each school's official fee page or fee-schedule PDF, e.g. saschina.org, shanghai-pudong.dulwich.org, shanghai.wellingtoncollege.cn, harrowshanghai.cn, scis-china.org, concordiashanghai.org
• National-school fees — portal.ds-sh.cn (German), lyceeshanghai.cn (French), srx2.net.cn (Japanese), skoschool.com (Korean), ssis.asia (Singapore)
• Bilingual and division fees — ykpaoschool.cn, shanghai.dehong.cn, shphschool.com, shsid.org, jcid.cn, fdis.net.cn, shwfl.edu.cn and wflms.cn (世外), SUIS campus sites and the Shanghai exam authority's published 2026 admission schemes (shmeea.edu.cn), shtcs.com.cn
• Four of the largest schools' ranges were independently re-checked against their official pages the same day; figures for schools that publish per semester or per month were converted to annual and are noted as such in our internal fact record. Re-verified yearly.