As I have reported on many occasions (see here and here and here and here and here and here), a for-profit company called Bridge International Academies has been building a market for low-cost, for-profit schooling in Africa. It has been negotiating with the government of Liberia to take charge of all primary education and expanding in Uganda. Investors in BIA include Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg.

 

Last summer, the Ministry of Education and Sports ordered the closure of 87 for-profit academies, including the 60 or so managed by BIA, on grounds that they did not meet minimum standards or appropriate facilities for students. Teachers’ unions objected to the academies’  use of un-credentialed teachers. This month, the Uganda High Court ordered the closure of all of BIA’s schools in Uganda.

 

BIA has 63 campuses and 12,000 students in Uganda. They will remain open until December 8, when students take their exams.

 

CNN reported:

 

A legal tug-of-war between Ugandan authorities and a for-profit international chain of schools has led to the education provider being ordered to shut down in a matter of weeks, leaving the lives of thousands of pupils in limbo….

 

 

Bridge International Academies said it provides the best possible education to its students and that it will do whatever it can to make sure their schools continue to operate in Uganda.
Many students, parents and teachers protested after Uganda High Court ordered the closure of the low-cost private schools, which are backed by Microsoft and Facebook founders Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg.
Bridge International Academies has suggested that the opposition against their chain of schools was because the campuses competed against local state-run and private schools.
The Director of Education Standards for the Ministry, Huzaifa Mutazindwa, told CNN that the nursery and primary schools were not licensed, the teachers weren’t qualified and that there was no record of its curriculum being approved.
“The Ministry does not know what is being taught in these schools which is a point of concern to (the) government,” Mutazindwa said…

For its part, BIA — which runs more than 400 nursery and primary schools across Africa — has continuously denied the allegations that have been made by the government.
“There’s a lot of miscommunication and a lot of very serious, unfounded allegations. We would like to be given the opportunity to explain ourselves … The Ministry has been unwilling to give us an audience to set the record straight,” Uganda’s BIA director, Andrew White, told CNN.
In a statement, BIA addressed eight allegations that have been made about its operations. It said it teaches the Ugandan curriculum, all schools have good sanitation facilities and that the majority of their teachers are certified and registered. Those who aren’t certified and registered, it said, are attending in-service training.

 

When asked why the allegations were made if they weren’t true, White said: “We definitely feel like a lot of pressure has been applied to have a particular view of Bridge that is a negative one….”
One educational advocacy group agrees with the Ugandan authorities’ decision to close BIA.
President of the Global Campaign for Education (GCE), Camilla Croso, told CNN that the quality of their schools is “totally inadequate and unacceptable.”
“They are profit making enormously,” she said. “It’s very indecent because they are looking at poor people as a profitable market.”
“It really is incompatible to have human rights and profit making because you are motivated and act in completely different ways.”