The start of 2017 will be the start of brave new eras for both The Scots School and All Saints’ College following a pair of significant announcements.

Scots last week announced an average 30 per cent drop in its tuition fees, launching a bold bid for enrolments to grow the student numbers.

The drop in fees comes after a concerted building program in recent years including a solar-heated indoor pool and a performing arts centre to boost the school’s offering to families.

But the impressive facilities have done little to boost student numbers that continue to lag well behind Scots’ main local rival, All Saints’.

The timing of the fee reduction was also telling, ensuring Scots got in the news while uncertainty remained over All Saints’ future as the search for a new owner continued.

Scots, with the backing of the wealthy Presbyterian Church of NSW, is heavily promoting its financial security as a lure to new parents, confident in the knowledge that many of those same parents have concerns about the what will happen at All Saints’ once a sale is finalised to repay an Anglican Diocese debt to the Commonwealth Bank.

Those questions will also be answered following confirmation on Thursday that a buyer had been found.

The identity of the owner has not yet been released, but we do know that All Saints’ College will operate as a “fully independent” school from next year.

That’s the second major change in Bathurst education, though the college will continue its association with the Anglican Church that dates back more than a century.

While the school’s sale was forced by financial mismanagement at a dicoesan level rather than college level, that has been a difficult message to sell to prospective parents.

The school community will now be hoping a new owner will pour new money into school facilities to take up the challenge for enrolments that Scots has laid down.

And if competition for student numbers continues to heat up between the pair, then that can only be a good thing for parents willing to pay big money for their children’s education.

One of the greatest rivalries in Bathurst will only become more fierce in 2017.