In Matabeleland North, Zimbabwe, a broken education system has led to schools relying on donors to support/provide fundamental resources. This donor support is sometimes sought by school leaders through funding provided from school tours, conducted as part of tour packages of southern Africa. Few studies have examined the implications of including a school tour in a mass tourism itinerary. This paper explores the philanthropic intervention into schooling using a case study of one school in Matabeleland North, a school that hosts school tours in exchange for small gifts and, sometimes substantial, financial donations. This paper reports on a three-month ethnographic study exploring the effect of the school tours. Data generated from the study included semi-structured interviews with teachers, students and tourism staff. Using a critical view of Development as a discursive framing for analysis, this paper reports on the art-based interviews with children. It argues that students experience the tourism in a manner that is repetitive, and at times, unproductive for learning. Given that one of the intended outcomes of school tours is a better learning environment for the students, the school tour may not be meeting its intended aim. The school tour represents an incursion of development discourse and capitalism into schooling. As philanthropy in schooling is increasing, and has been for the last few decades, it is of pivotal importance to examine the manner in which tourism in schools effects the day-to-day experiences of students and how dominant discourses around ‘development’ shape the interaction of tourism and schooling.

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