Rising tuition fees in Catholic schools push African families to the brink
A crying parent with an unpaid tuition balance walked into the staff room of a Catholic private school and begged the teachers to help enrol her son.
The school's policy required the woman pay at least 60% of her son's full tuition bill before he could join the student body. She didn't have the money and was led away. 'She was pleading, 'Please help me,'' said Beatrice Akite, a teacher at St. Kizito Secondary School in Uganda's capital city, who witnessed the outburst.
Two weeks into second term, Ms. Akite recounted the woman's desperate moment to highlight how distressed parents are being crushed by unpredictable fees they can't pay, forcing their children to drop out of school. It's leaving many in sub-Saharan Africa — which has the world's highest dropout rates — to criticise the mission-driven Catholic Church for not doing enough to ease the financial pressure families face.
The Catholic Church is the region's largest nongovernmental investor in education. Catholic schools have long been a pillar of affordable but high-quality education, especially for poor families.
Towards privatisation
Their appeal remains strong even with competition from other nongovernmental investors now eyeing schools as enterprises for profit. The growing trend toward privatisation is sparking concern that the Catholic Church may price out the people who need uplifting.
Ms. Akite hopes Catholic leaders support measures that would streamline fees across schools of comparable quality.
Kampala's St. Kizito Secondary School, where Ms. Akite teaches literature, was founded by priests of the Comboni missionary order, known for its dedication to serving poor communities. Its students come mostly from working-class families and tuition per term is roughly $300, a substantial sum in a country where GDP per capita was about $1,000 in 2023. Yet that tuition is lower than at many other Catholic-run schools in Kampala, Ms. Akite said.
One of the most expensive private schools in Kampala, the Catholic-run Uganda Martyrs' Secondary School Namugongo, maintains a policy of 'zero balance' when a child reports to school at the beginning of a three-month term. This means students must be fully paid by the time they report to school.
Tuition at the school was once as high as $800 but has since dropped to about $600 as enrolment swelled to nearly 5,000, said deputy headmaster James Batte.
On a recent morning, there was a queue of parents waiting outside Batte's office to request more time to clear tuition balances.
Luxury setup
Daniel Birungi, an electrical engineer in Kampala whose son enroled this year at St. Mary's College Kisubi in Uganda, said the emerging risk for traditional Catholic schools is to cater only to the rich.
There is hot water in the bathrooms, he said, describing what he felt was a trend toward levels of luxury he never imagined as a student there in the 1990s. Now, students are prohibited from packing snacks and instead encouraged to buy what they need from school-owned canteens, he said.
The World Bank reported in 2023 that 54% of adults in sub-Saharan Africa rank the issue of paying school fees higher than medical bills and other expenses.
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