A full year’s commitment, paid to the school directly, covering the transport and materials that quietly end most educations.

What ends an education

When a student stops attending, the explanation given is almost always fees. It is the explanation that makes sense to everyone: there is an amount, a deadline and a letter.

It is also, frequently, not the whole reason — and programmes built only around it keep discovering that the student leaves anyway.

Transport is a daily cost with no deadline and no letter, which is exactly why it is easy to stop paying. A student who cannot reach school reliably does not withdraw. They attend less, fall behind, and stop.

Materials — books, exercise books, a calculator, a uniform that still fits. A student without the textbook is not learning less because they are less able.

Examination and registration costs fall due at the point where the whole investment is about to pay off, which is the worst possible timing.

The cost of the time itself is the largest and least discussed. An older student is a person who could be earning.

How this is designed

We commit for the full year, not term by term. Term-by-term funding creates a gap before every term where a family does not know whether the student is continuing, and quietly begins planning for the alternative. Committing for the year removes that gap. It costs the same money and changes the decision.

Fees go directly to the institution. Not from distrust — for reconciliation. A payment to a school can be matched against a student’s record in both directions. A cash payment cannot be, which exposes the family to suspicion they have done nothing to earn.

We watch attendance, not arrears. By the time fees lapse, a student has usually been absent for weeks. A school that reports a week of unexplained absence gives us time to do something.

We ask what else is costing them. Not as a form, which produces the answer the family thinks we want, but as a conversation. The answer is often small and cheap to solve, and nobody mentioned it because nobody asked.

What we measure

Not fees paid. Fees paid is an input. Students still in school a year later is the result, and the two can move independently.