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. But her students are desperate to get into school. Eddie, an orphan, tries to scrape the school fees money together through odd jobs and support from his brother. Justice, a skilled dodger, crawls under the fence and tricks his teachers with a borrowed payment card to get into class.