Uncertainty hits thousands of pupils in low-cost Bridge

As the 2,900 pupils at a World Bank and Bill Gates-backed chain of low-cost schools sit their Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE) tomorrow, little do they know of a high-stakes battle playing out thousands of miles away in Washington DC, on the future survival of the unique model.

A total of 116 local and international civil society groups have ganged up to push the World Bank to relinquish its investment in Bridge International Academies, saying the Bretton Woods institution should instead fund public education.

Bridge charges a fee of Sh640 per month across the 405 nursery and primary schools it operates in Kenya with a total population of 100,000 pupils — and will this year present its pioneer cohort to sit for KCPE.

The International Finance Corporation (IFC), the World Bank’s private sector lending arm, in January 2014 invested $10 million (Sh1.02 billion) in the mass-market education provider.

“We call on the World Bank Group to stop promoting the model used by Bridge International Academies and other fee-charging, private schools, and publicly re-commit the World Bank to universal, free and compulsory basic education,” reads the groups’ protest letter addressed to the bank’s president Jim Yong Kim.

“If the World Bank is serious about improving education in Kenya and Uganda, it should support our government to expand and improve our public education systems, provide quality education to all children free-of-charge, and address other financial barriers to access,” said the groups in a strongly-worded letter.

Those opposing Bridge’s franchising model include international charity ActionAid, Education for All (EFA) movement, Federation of Women Lawyers (Fida Kenya) and the Kenya National Union of Teachers (Knut).

Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg in March this year invested $10 million (Sh1.02 billion) in Bridge, joining a list of other investors who see the low-cost education provider as social enterprise.

The new push by civil society groups comes as a second blow to Bridge after the government issued a blanket order stopping the opening of new non-formal schools and declined to register the institutions as KCPE test centres.

Only 900 learners will sit for their KCPE at Bridge centres which received approval as examination centres. The remaining 2,000 pupils will do the test from public schools located near Bridge.

READ: Ministry stops expansion of low-cost schools

This was after Kenya’s Education ministry last year took away test centre codes given to informal schools by the Kenya National Examinations Council (Knec), pending fresh registration of such centres under new rules yet to be published.

Education Cabinet Secretary Jacob Kaimenyi early this year asked non-formal schools not to open any new centres pending the issuance of fresh rules governing the sub-sector, which were first drafted in May 2009 and are yet to be finalised.

Bridget Waithera, a class six pupil at Bridge school in Kin’geero village, Kiambu County, said she is happy about the class size and teachers’ enthusiasm at the school compared to the public school she previously attended. “We were more than 40 in class and homework used to be marked a week later,” she said.

“But here we have homework every day and it is marked,” said the 11-year-old who aspires to be a doctor.

But Bridget, who lives with her grandmother, may not be able to realise her dreams if the lobbies succeeds in kicking out private capital from low-cost education.

The Bridge drama came to light on April 7, 2015 when Dr Kim praised the Kenyan-born chain of low cost schools for delivering higher literacy and numeracy scores compared to other public schools.

“After about two years, students’ average scores for reading and math have risen high above their public school peers,” said Dr Kim in a speech titled Ending Extreme Poverty by 2030: The Final Push delivered at the 2015 World Bank spring meetings.

“Over 50 per cent of young people in Kenya who have completed six years of schooling cannot read a simple sentence,” the World Bank boss said.

READ: Kenyan-born chain of low-cost private schools wins global recognition

Co-founder Shannon May started Bridge International Academies as an answer to Kenya’s public primary schools which are plagued by teacher absenteeism, low motivation, crowded classes and rundown facilities.

“Bridge teachers are in class and teaching for 10 hours a day and absenteeism is virtually nil, as they must check in using their tablets, which have a geolocation function,” said Ms May, who founded Bridge with her husband Jay Kimmelman.

Kenyan teachers are either absent from school or are not engaged in teaching 47 per cent of the time, a World Bank study released in 2013 showed.

Her idea was to deliver affordable and quality education to households earning about $2 (Sh200) per day, using economies of scale.

In a rejoinder, the World Bank defended its investment in Bridge, saying the private sector can be a source of knowledge and innovation that can lead to more innovation and greater effectiveness in the public sector.

“Our support for Bridge International Academies — which has become an option for low-income families — is complementary to our public sector support, to ensure that parents who decide to invest in private schooling are also getting the best possible education for their children,” Dr Kim said in his reply dated August 14, 2015 and addressed to the lobbies.

Effectiveness of model

The World Bank said it will undertake a study to establish the effectiveness of Bridge’s model in terms of learners gaining literacy and numeracy skills as compared to their peers in State-funded education institutions.

“We are launching a rigorous, independent impact evaluation of the Bridge International Academies programme in Kenya, which will be the first large-scale, randomised, controlled trial of fee-paying schools in sub-Saharan Africa.”

Ms May said an independent study conducted in 2013 found that pupils at Bridge acquire 32 per cent more competencies in English and 13 per cent more skills in Mathematics compared to those in public schools.

The research by Decisions Management Consulting used USAid’s early-grade reading and Mathematics assessments and sampled more than 10,000 pupils over 26 months at Bridge and neighbouring schools.

The Kenya Independent Schools Association, a non-formal schools lobby, says there are about 1.5 million primary school children in informal schools.