What a school term actually costs
Fees are rarely the whole expense. A closer look at the smaller costs that decide whether a child returns to class after the holidays.
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When families tell us they cannot send a child back to school, the conversation almost never begins with tuition. It begins with a uniform that no longer fits, a set of books for a new grade, a bag, shoes, and the transport fare for a school that is three kilometres away.
Individually, none of these is a large amount. Together, arriving in the same fortnight, they exceed what a household earning a daily wage can absorb without giving something else up. The decision that follows is not about valuing education. It is arithmetic.
Working at that specific point — the fortnight before term — turns out to matter more than the size of the support. The same amount offered two months later, after a child has already stopped attending, is far harder to act on.
This is where our education work concentrates: identifying which cost is the one that will actually break the household budget, and covering that.