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Mrs. Mukasa, the new headmistress at Masindi Secondary State School, finds herself in dire financial straits; three quarters of the students have failed to pay their school fees and the teachers have gone without full pay for three months. She is determined that all children should be forced to pay, and instigates a tough new gate policy that is supposed to catch the defaulters. Her students, however, are desperate to get into school; Eddie, an orphan, tries to scrape the fee money together through odd jobs and support from his brother, and Justice, a skilled dodger, crawls under the fence and tricks his teachers with a borrowed payment card to get into class.

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About African School:

This lively series from BBC FOUR captures the daily lives, concerns and personalities of young Africans and their teachers in the Ugandan town of Masindi.

African School features two of the town’s schools – Kamurasi Demonstration School (a primary school) led by the resourceful and positive Mr Byoona, and Masindi Secondary School (known as “Massesco”) under the leadership of Mrs. Mukasa (the second youngest female head in the country).

The programs are stories of celebration and challenge that will rekindle memories of school years: teenage romance, exam pressure, football tournaments, special needs teaching, prefect elections, religion and sex education.

But in Masindi, school life is played out against the challenging issues faced by Uganda. Local HIV rates run at 7% and the conflict in northern Uganda has forced people to flee into Masindi district.

Poverty is a part of daily life for many of the pupils, yet the appetite for life is undiminished. There is a thirst for school, where the chance of education and the opportunities it offers can transform one’s life (some children who cannot afford senior school fees even break in to get to classes).

Coupled with the extraordinary enthusiasm and openness of the pupils and teachers, the series gives an entertaining, refreshing and up-lifting insight into understanding what life is really like in Africa today.