Bridge International Academies
Bridge International Academies is a Kenyan company which provides for-profit education to children in India, Kenya, Nigeria and Uganda. It was started in 2008, and calls itself a "social enterprise". History. Bridge opened a London, UK office. In 2016, Bridge opened six schools in Andhra Pradesh, India in a partnership with the Government of Andhra Pradesh to use disused school buildings to create Bridge schools. Bridge won the 2016 Global Shared Value award in Kenya. Costs for bridge schools net losses and revenues are estimated and are not released by the firm, with losses in 2016  estimated $12m a year and with a total revenue of $16m / year. In 2017, the number of Bridge academies in Lagos, Nigeria increased. Bridge removed pupils after taking control of schools with large class sizes, and removed 74% of incumbent teachers from their schools. Structure. Bridge is managed through a centralised system in each country, lowering the administrative costs for operating individual schools. Each Bridge school has only one administrative staff member, known as an Academy Manager, headteacher or Principal, who manages the school through a smartphone loaded with a custom-developed application that connects managers  to a central cloud-based server. The rate of teacher absenteeism for Bridge schools is documented at less than 1%, whereas in Kenyan public schools according to World Bank research, absenteeism in the classroom is 47.3%. Criticism. Bridge has received criticism from different sources, including teaching unions and education rights groups. Education groups have pushed back on Bridge as using a model that stifles creativity, innovation, and goes against educational research in developed countries. Critics have been accused of putting 'ideology before education'. After the president of the World Bank Jim Yong Kim praised Bridge Schools in 2015, there was  a large push-back from organisations in Kenya and Uganda, disagreeing with his statement. They expressed deep concern over the global financial institution's investment in a chain of private primary schools targeting poor families in Kenya and Uganda and called on the institution to support free universal education instead. Others have argued that their model, focused on guided instruction, actually enhances creativity similar to the way musicians use sheet music or actors have scripts. The company has come under criticism from aid agencies and civil rights groups, including ActionAid and Education for All, for being detrimental to the plan  of offering a “universal, free and compulsory basic education” to all children. Education International (EI), a global group of teachers’ unions, has criticised Bridge for its for-profit model being “morally wrong.” Global Justice Now has criticised Bridge by suggesting that “the cost per student at just $6 dollars a month” is misleading. It states that 'the suggestion that $6 is an acceptable amount of money for poor households to pay reveals a profound lack of understanding of the reality of the lives of the poorest”. Global Justice Now calculated that for half their populations, the $6  per month per child it would cost to send three primary school age children to a Bridge Academy, is equal to at least a quarter of their monthly income. Many families already struggle to provide three meals a day to their children. It has also claimed that the real total cost of sending one child to a Bridge school is between $9 and $13 a month, and up to $20 when including school meals. Funding and investors. Bridge has received funding from a number of investors, including: