School uniforms were Karen Maric's largest expense for her daughters, Ekaterina and Aria, who are entering year 9 and 7 at Saint Francis Xavier College.

The cost of Aria's high school uniform was considerably higher than her primary school one, but savvy parents at the college were able to make use of a contactless second-hand clothing pool to keep costs down.

One item Ms Maric doesn't like to scrimp on is school shoes.

"It's better to buy the more expensive ones as they last better than cheap ones," she said.

"It's quite a lot once you add everything up, especially with the stationery lists but we do a stocktake of what's leftover from the previous year so you don't have to buy absolutely everything on the stationery list."

The Smith Family regional program manager for ACT and NSW Olga Srbovski said the beginning of the year was always a financially stressful time for families.

"It can be really expensive, especially if there's more than one child in the family and even more so if students are commencing kindergarten and commencing a new school, or travelling into year 7 or even into the senior years because it's new uniforms involved with new book packs," she said.

Analysis by The Canberra Times found it would cost about $670 to get a kindergarten child who goes to a public school all of their items new, including school and lunch bags, hat, raincoat, book pack, three sets of uniforms and school shoes.

The cost rises to about $1100 to purchase all of the basic items for a year 7 student attending a non-government school, not including school fees, technology levies, camps, excursions and clothing and equipment for extra-curricular activities.

Ms Srbovski said even if parents chose to send their children to a public school, the costs of education were still high.

"If you're a senior student or in years 9 and 10 there are also subject fees that you could be charged, if you're doing specific subjects for example, where you need additional resources to participate in that area of learning," she said.

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ACT public school parents made $3.9 million in voluntary and subject contributions in the 2019 school year.

Ms Srbovski said The Smith Family supported 1800 Canberra students as part of its Learning for Life program.

Each family in the program has a family partnership coordinator to support them as well as access to a scholarship for each child to help with the material costs of going to school.

The Smith Family also links families into programs to improve skills such as literacy, numeracy, financial literacy and provides career mentoring for young people.

"If they don't have the resources and the equipment that they need for their learning their learning isn't as good as it could be," Ms Srbovski.

"So they don't start out on the same footing as their peers, their confidence and their self esteem doesn't grow and develop and research tells us that if kids start behind when they start kindergarten, by the time they get to year 10 they could be anywhere up to three years behind their peers."

She said the charity was looking for 190 new sponsors in ACT to continue the Learning for Life program.

If you are interested in supporting The Smith Family head to www.thesmithfamily.com.au.