- Every UK private school has been targeted by a fee payment scam or attempted fraud in the past five years according to IRIS Education research
- On average, parents lose £3,200 per successful scam, with one in five cases involving losses of up to £10,000
- More than a third of schools lack confidence in the security of their fee collection processes as threat levels rise
London, UK, 19th January, 2026: Parents at fee-paying schools are losing thousands of pounds each year to sophisticated fee payment scams, with independent schools in the UK experiencing at least one scam or attempted fraud over the past five years, according to new research from IRIS Education*.
The research, which surveyed 100 bursars at UK private schools, found that scammers are routinely impersonating schools and sending fake fee payment requests to parents. All bursars polled said their school community had been targeted at least once, with the average bursar reporting five separate scam incidents over the period – equating to roughly one event per school, per year.
When scams succeed, the financial impact on families can be severe. Bursars polled by IRIS estimate that parents have lost an average of £3,200 per incident, while one in five (19%) say they have seen parents lose between £5,000 and £10,000 in a single case.
A growing threat requiring stronger defences
Despite the scale of the issue, many schools admit their defences are not enough. While nearly nine in ten independent schools (87%) say they have some procedures in place to guard against fraud, more than a third (37%) are not confident their current fee collection processes are secure. Senior schools are four times more likely than prep schools to say they lack adequate security measures (19% versus 4%).
Concern is growing across the sector. More than two-thirds of bursars (69%) say the threat of fee payment scams has increased over the past five years, while a similar proportion (68%) are worried about scammers targeting their school community in the near future.
Simon Freeman, Managing Director of IRIS Education, said: “These findings reflect the enormous challenge independent schools are facing from increasingly sophisticated fraudsters. The gap between having procedures in place and feeling confident those procedures actually work tells you everything – schools know their current defences aren’t keeping pace with the threat.
“What concerns us is how quickly scammers have evolved their tactics. They’re monitoring school communications, timing attacks around fee deadlines, and replicating official payment instructions with remarkable accuracy. Many schools are doing everything right with traditional processes, but those very processes have become the vulnerabilities that criminals are trained to exploit.”
Why independent schools are increasingly vulnerable
According to the research, independent schools face a unique combination of risk factors that make them particularly attractive targets for fraudsters. High-value transactions, often involving multiple payment instalments throughout the year, create numerous opportunities for criminals to intercept or impersonate payment communications. Many schools still rely on email instructions for bank transfers, giving scammers multiple touchpoints to insert themselves into the payment chain.
The polling also found that many schools rely on a fragmented mix of payment methods that can increase exposure to fraud. Four in five schools (80%) offer Direct Debit as a fee payment option, but just two-fifths (38%) say it is their preferred method, despite it offering significantly stronger security than manual bank transfers or cheque payments.
Freeman continued: “Many bursars want to adopt more secure payment methods, but they’re juggling multiple disconnected systems that create complexity and risk. The fraud we’re seeing isn’t sophisticated hacking – it’s criminals exploiting the gaps between systems. When payment instructions are sent separately from management systems, or when parents receive payment details via regular email, you’ve created opportunities for impersonation.”
Protecting school communities
IRIS Education has developed a best practice guide to cybersecurity threats for schools, groups and trusts, providing expert insight on the current cybersecurity landscape and practical steps to strengthen and develop organisation’s safeguards. The guide is available here.
“As schools increasingly communicate digitally with parents and process more transactions online, the attack surface grows,” Freeman said. “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.”
IRIS Education provides specialist school management software used by over 12,000 private and state UK schools, including iSAMS By IRIS, which serves much of the independent school sector, providing its solutions to over 1,700 private schools and groups in over 93 countries. The company facilitates over £15 million in payments between schools and parents every month.
iSAMS has enhanced its payments capability in response to these security challenges. The solution enables schools to offer secure, automated fee collection including Auto Debits (automated direct debit management) and international payments in multiple currencies (available Spring/Summer 2026), directly within their existing iSAMS environment. By eliminating the need for multiple system logins or manual payment instructions, schools can remove key vulnerabilities that fraudsters exploit. Features such as automated direct debit collection and integrated payment processing provide parents with a seamless, secure payment experience – facilitated by the iSAMS Parent Cloud Portal – while significantly reducing schools’ exposure to payment fraud.
For more information visit: https://www.iris.co.uk/education/
