Teachers from across Africa
urged the continental bloc to halt the privatisation of national
education systems today.
Unions affiliated to the
Education International (EI) federation pressed the African Union
(AU) to stop the spread of sordid tin-shack schools funded by the
world's richest man.
The EI statement, issued in the
Ethiopian capital and seat of the AU Addis Ababa warned: “we are
witnessing a shift away from education as a public good,” with “a
reduction in education budgets and increased privatisation of
education.”
“This
is not the Africa we want,” said EI Africa Committee Chair
Christian Addai-Poku, referring to the AU's 'Agenda 2063' plan.
“Quality
education for the public good is an indispensable condition for the
development of our continent and the realisation of the full
potential of all its people.”
The teaching unions criticised
the rapid growth across the continent of ‘low-cost’ private
schools, which they said were “notorious for employing unqualified
teachers with low salaries and few labour rights.”
“The
rise of ‘low-cost’ school chains run by multinational
corporations offers little connection with the culture and rights of
citizens,” the unions said, adding that they “operate with
inadequate, if any, monitoring or accountability.”
Unsanitary
tin shacks
The statement was accompanied by
an EI report into education on the continent which singled out for
criticism the Nairobi-based but US-funded Bridge International
Academies (BIA).
The company, founded in 2008 by
three Harvard University graduates, is bankrolled by the world's
richest man and Microsoft mogul Bill Gates, along with fellow dotcom
billionaires Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook and Ebay's Pierre Omidyar.
University of Alberta, Canada,
researcher Cutis Riep exposed in 2016 how BIA employs unqualified
staff to read out rigidly scripted lessons from a tablet computer.
In May of that year BIA took out
'wanted poster'-style adverts in the Ugandan press, accusing Riep of
impersonating a member of staff and of trespass.
He was arrested and questioned
by police for two days – before being released without charge. BIA
justified its actions by insinuating that Riep posed a threat to
pupils at its schools.
In August 2016 BIA's chain of 63
schools in Uganda was ordered closed by Education Minister Janet
Museveni, after inspectors found they failed to meet basic sanitary
standards or follow the national curriculum.
A 2018 High Court ruling stated
that BIA schools had “mushroomed in Uganda without any consultation
or authorisation from the Ministry” and had only applied for the
required license after authorities discovered them.
In February 2017 Kenya's Busia
county ordered 10 BIA schools closed, following a court battle, but
the firm still runs more than 400 schools in Kenya.
Unaffordable
education
Today's EI report also
challenges BIA's claim to provide “low-cost” private education to
families living on $2 a day or less, saying its fees are still too
expensive for most parents to send more than one child to school.
Quoting research by Curtis Riep
and his colleagues, along with the Kenya National Union of Teachers
(KNUT) – a staunch opponent of BIA and school privatisation – it
says the firm's advertised fees of $6 per month hide other costs
adding up to a real total of $17.25.
That amounts to around half of
average Ugandan household income to send two children to school.
Privatising schools “undermines
the right of all students to free, quality education and entrenches
inequalities, particularly for girls and the socially disadvantaged,”
the EI statement said.
Global
dominance
BIA also operates in India's
Andra Pradesh state and Nigeria, and in 2016 was one of eight firms
chosen by Liberia's government for a pilot scheme to privatise the
primary education system.
A Liberian government report
leaked in 2017 said the programme would not work “with sustainable
budgets and staffing levels, and without negative side effects on
other schools.”
Gates, Zuckerberg and fellow IT
tycoon Michael Dell have funded a similar scheme in the Indian city
of Hyderabad – dubbed 'Cyberabad' for its concentration of tech
companies.
BIA also lists the World Bank
among its “investors” – and has previously received funding
from the UK's Department for International Development (DfID).
BIA's methods seem to be
catching on in state education too. In his State of the Nation
address last week, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa announced
the roll-out of digitised “workbooks” on tablets for all
schoolchildren.
Ramaphosa was named on Sunday as
AU chairman for 2020. It remains to be seen if the bloc will take any
concrete action against BIA and other such interventions by
billionaire western philanthropists.