Fake fee payment scams cost parents thousands at UK private schools, report finds
New research suggests every UK private school has faced at least one fee payment scam attempt in the past five years, with parents losing thousands of pounds per incident as schools struggle to secure payment processes.
Parents at UK fee-paying schools are being caught out by fake fee payment requests, with new research indicating that every private school has been targeted by a scam or attempted fraud in the past five years. The findings point to growing financial losses for families and rising concern among school finance teams about the security of existing payment systems.
The research, based on a survey of one hundred bursars at independent schools, found that schools experience an average of five scam incidents over a five-year period. When fraud is successful, parents lose an estimated average of three thousand two hundred pounds per case, with nearly one in five incidents involving losses between five thousand and ten thousand pounds.
The study was commissioned by IRIS Education, which provides school management and finance software used by private and state schools across the UK.
Payment scams now a routine risk for school communities
According to bursars surveyed, scammers commonly impersonate schools and issue false payment instructions to parents, often timed around fee deadlines. All respondents said their school community had been targeted at least once, underlining how routine such attempts have become.
Concern about exposure is rising. Nearly seven in ten bursars report that the threat of fee payment scams has increased over the past five years, while more than two-thirds say they are worried about further targeting in the near future. Despite most schools having some fraud prevention measures in place, more than a third of bursars say they lack confidence in the security of their fee collection processes.
Senior schools appear particularly exposed, with nearly one in five reporting inadequate security measures compared with a small minority of prep schools.
Email-based payments leave schools exposed
The research highlights structural factors that make private schools attractive targets. High-value transactions spread across multiple payment points in the academic year create repeated opportunities for impersonation. Many schools still rely on email to share bank transfer instructions, giving fraudsters multiple chances to intervene.
The survey also found that while four in five schools offer Direct Debit as a payment option, fewer than two in five treat it as their preferred method. Manual bank transfers and fragmented payment systems continue to dominate, despite carrying higher fraud risk.
Security gaps persist despite rising awareness
Bursars report growing awareness of the issue but limited confidence that existing processes are keeping pace with increasingly targeted scams. Payment instructions sent outside core management systems and reliance on disconnected tools were cited as ongoing weaknesses.
IRIS Education says the findings reflect a widening gap between awareness of fraud risk and the ability of schools to address it effectively, particularly as digital communication with parents increases and payment volumes grow.
Simon Freeman, Managing Director of IRIS Education, says: “As schools increasingly communicate digitally with parents and process more transactions online, the attack surface grows. Schools need to treat payment security with the same seriousness they apply to safeguarding in other areas because ultimately, we have a duty of care to protect families from financial harm.”
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