A Rs 20-lakh course today could cost Rs 83 lakh in 15 years: How to plan your child's education

Most financial goals are forgiving. A home purchase can wait a year. Retirement can be pushed back by a couple of years if the corpus falls short. A child's admission cannot. The date is announced, the fee falls due, and if it is not paid, the seat goes to someone else. That makes child education planning a problem with one fixed point. The child's age tells you when the money is needed. What stays open is how much, and that number has a habit of growing. How much does a child's education cost in India? The National Sample Survey on education, conducted in 2025, gives a sense of the starting point.

A household spends about Rs 2,900 a year per student in a government school and about Rs 25,000 in a non-government school. Around 27% of students also rely on private coaching. Plan the whole journey and the figures add up quickly. In Mumbai, tuition from nursery to Class XII ranges from Rs 7.9 lakh in affordable schools to Rs 17.3 lakh in mid-range schools and Rs 61.2 lakh in high-fee schools, before transport, uniforms, books and extracurriculars. And that is before higher education, Government data shows more than 18 lakh Indian students studying abroad, across 153 countries. At home, several professional courses charge upwards of Rs 10 lakh in tuition alone.

Most parents know this in a general way. Few have put a number against it. Children's education is the primary financial goal for 20% of non-investors and 15% of investors, yet a goal without a number is closer to a wish. How does education inflation change the goal? Education costs have been rising for years, and the plan has to allow for that. Education services inflation was close to 4% in September 2026, and about 3.5% for higher education. These are national averages across government and private institutions. They may not describe what schools in your city charge, and some private institutions have raised fees by 10-15% in a year.

The gap between those two assumptions is larger than it looks. Take a course that costs Rs 20 lakh today. In 15 years, it would cost about Rs 36 lakh if fees rise 4% a year. At 10% a year, it would cost about Rs 83 lakh. The difference is over Rs 47 lakh. A plan built on the lower figure, meeting a fee bill written at the higher one, does not fall short by a small margin, it can mean a different college, or a different country. The inflation you assume is the first decision in the plan, and it deserves more thought than it usually gets. Why does starting early lower the monthly SIP? Wealth managers make this point often, and the arithmetic supports it.

For illustration, assume a return of 10% a year, which is not assured. A monthly SIP of about Rs 21,000 for 15 years would build a corpus of roughly Rs 83 lakh. Begin five years later, and the same goal needs about Rs 42,000 a month for 10 years, waiting five years doubles the monthly amount. The reason is not the five years of missed contributions. It is what those contributions would have earned in the years that followed. Compounding needs time, and time is the one input a parent cannot buy later. Starting early also gives you room to start small. A parent who begins at about Rs 11,500 a month and raises the SIP by 10% each year reaches roughly the same Rs 83 lakh in 15 years, on the same illustrative assumption.

The step-up follows income, which tends to rise as the child grows It is a plan most households can hold to. How should the plan change as the date gets closer? Markets do not follow admission calendars. A correction in the 14th year can reduce a corpus just as the first fee is due, and admissions will not wait for recovery. This is why the portfolio should change as the date nears. With a long horizon, a parent may hold a larger share in equity funds. As the goal approaches, it makes sense to move gradually towards less volatile options, so that the value built over years is not exposed to one bad quarter.

The right pace depends on the family's circumstances and risk appetite, and a conversation with a financial advisor on asset allocation is worth having. Review the plan once a year. The child's interests will change, and so will the cost estimate. The part we control We spend years telling children they can become whatever they choose. Whether that holds true often comes down to a fee schedule on a particular day, years after the conversation. Nobody can move the admission date. But the start date is still ours to choose, and every year we delay narrows what the fund can do. Disclaimer: The views and investment tips expressed by experts on Moneycontrol.com are their own and not those of the website or its management.

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