Dutch taxpayers paying for Bill Gates’ sordid African schools

This video says about itself:

Profiting from the Poor: the case of Bridge International Academies in Kenya

8 November 2016

Pupils are not really learning and teachers are not really teaching at Bridge International Academies in Kenya. Still, many families sacrifice large sums of their budget, which go into the “low cost” education provided by this chain. But what lies behind the green walls of these schools? Should parents trust them, pupils put their future into their hands and international donors contribute to the success of a chain that is not up to standards when it comes to offering quality education for all? This video will be eye-opening for many.

Bridge runs more than 400 nurseries and primary schools across Africa. It started its expansion after opening its first school in a slum in 2009 in Nairobi, Kenya, where it currently operates 359 academies throughout catering to 102,644 students with over 4255 academy staff.

Bridge is financially supported by the likes of Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and education conglomerate Pearson Ltd. It is also supported by the World Bank and DfID-UK. Bridge’s business model, which includes fee charging schools run by unqualified teachers delivering a scripted standardised curriculum, has faced heavy criticism.

The Ugandan branch of Bridge has recently come under scrutiny for offering an education well below the national standards, which prompted the order by the Ugandan Education Ministry to close the schools in Ocotber 2016. Also attracting significant criticism is the Liberian Government’s announcement to outsource its primary schools to Bridge.

The company has plans to dramatically increase the scale and scope of its operations to deliver education services to over 10 million children across a dozen countries by 2025.

To find more about Bridge go here.

From daily The Morning Star in Britain:

Netherlands: MPs challenge funding of for profit shack schools

Thursday 16th February 2017

TWO MPs in the Netherlands have challenged Dutch state funding of private shack schools in Africa, global teaching union Education International (EI) reported on Tuesday.

Socialist Party MPs Harry Van Bommel and Jasper van Dijk have written to Foreign Trade and Development Minister Lilianne Ploumen about government funding of Bridge International Academies (BIA).

They asked for details of payments to the organisation through programmes such as the Dutch Good Growth Fund and the Massif Fund.

The MPs queried Ms Ploumen’s stance towards BIA after the Ugandan government closed down all 63 of its schools.

“Do you think it is justified to finance, directly or indirectly, for-profit education with public money?” they asked.

EI has exposed how BIA, bankrolled by the world’s richest man Bill Gates and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, runs sordid shack schools employing unqualified teachers giving scripted lessons.

Britain pulled out of funding BIA last year.

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