Raising school fees torments many Africans. Some expect the Catholic Church to do more to help

A crying parent with an unpaid tuition balance walked into the staff room of a Catholic private school and begged the teachers to help enroll 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.

“It was very embarrassing. We had never seen something like that.”

Two weeks into second term, 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 criticize the mission-driven Catholic Church for not doing enough