What to budget for in a Ugandan school term

The notice pinned outside the office gives tuition. It is the number people repeat at the borehole and the number a father quotes when he says he cannot manage. It is almost never the amount that leaves the house.

Around it sit other charges that the school raises separately: a development or building fund, a parents association contribution, an examination fund for internal tests, remedial or extra coaching, and in many schools a contribution towards food. Some schools fold most of these into one figure. Others list tuition alone and let the rest arrive in pieces. That is why two schools quoting the same fees can cost a household very different amounts by the end of term.

Before you compare schools, or before you decide you cannot afford the one your daughter is at, ask the head teacher or the bursar for the complete requirements list on paper. A school that will not put it in writing is telling you something useful.

This is the block of spending that arrives all at once, usually in the last week of the holiday when money is already thin. For a day scholar the list is short but not small.

A boarder adds a whole second list, and it is the one that surprises families who have only ever had day scholars.

These are the items nobody budgets for, and they are the ones that keep a girl at home. They come with a day or two of notice, in a note carried home in an exercise book, and they are small enough that no household feels able to say no.

Expect photocopied notes and past papers, a contribution towards mock or end-of-term papers, sports day, a class party, a report card fee, and a request for a broom, a hoe, a jerrycan or toilet paper for the class. In some schools a girl who arrives without hers is sent to stand outside, which is how a small item becomes a missed day.

The practical answer is to keep a separate small amount aside from the start of term specifically for these, rather than treating each one as an emergency. A savings group member can hold it in the group box. A mother selling produce can set aside the takings from one market day.

P7, S4 and S6 are different, and the difference is not small. On top of everything above, a candidate is registered with the national examinations body, and registration has a fee, a deadline and a set of documents behind it.

Registration usually requires passport photographs and proof of identity or age, and the deadline falls months before the papers are sat. A girl whose registration was not completed in time does not sit, whatever her fees position is later in the year. Ask the head teacher, in writing, for the registration date and what is needed, at the start of the year rather than the middle.

Candidate classes also carry mock examinations, revision materials, and at many schools a residential revision period or holiday coaching that the school treats as compulsory. Budget for the exam year as a bigger year, and start earlier.

Distance is a cost even when nobody pays cash for it. A girl walking an hour each way arrives tired and leaves early, and in the wet season the same walk means arriving soaked, with wet books, or paying a boda she cannot usually afford. In parts of Kamuli and Napak the route floods for weeks at a time and the choice becomes a boda fare or a missed day.

Lunch is the other daily cost. Where the school provides a meal there is a food contribution in cash or in kind. Where it does not, a girl either goes home at midday, which loses the afternoon, or she sits through it. Girls who skip lunch every day stop keeping up long before anyone calls it a dropout.

Add a term's worth of sanitary protection to the same column. It is a school cost, whatever the school calls it, because without it she loses days.

Term one is the expensive one. Uniform, shoes, books and the year's registrations land together, usually just after the season when a farming household has least cash. Term two is generally lighter. Term three carries end-of-year costs and, in a candidate class, the examination period itself.

Knowing that shape is what lets a family plan. Shoes and uniform bought quietly in the middle of term two cost less attention than the same purchase in the panic week, and a girl who has grown out of hers by June is easier to re-kit in July than in January.

It also tells a savings group when to plan its share-out. A cycle that ends a fortnight before term one reporting day does more for school attendance than one that ends in May.

Do this on paper, with the person who actually holds the money in the household present. It takes half an hour and it changes the conversation from a vague dread to a number you can work on.

Most households reach this point at least once, and the ones whose daughters stay in school are not the ones with more money. They are the ones who spoke early. A head teacher who is told in the holiday that a family will be short has options in September that are gone in October.

Work the three routes in parallel rather than one at a time: an arrangement with the school, money from a savings group or the share-out, and any bursary the school, sub-county or a local organisation is running. None of the three is reliable on its own.

Seeds of Hope runs the Girls in School programme with a set of partner schools in Kamuli district. Our guide on finding help with a girl's school fees sets out what it covers, how a place is agreed, and the other sources of fee support worth asking about first.