Let kids learn

Why would anyone who claims to care about the world’s poorest children try to shut down their schools? It’s strange and sad, but several British charities, in cahoots with some British unions, are making a concerted effort to close down hundreds of schools in Africa. They are doing this because they dislike private education, seeming not to care that this will destroy the life chances of thousands of desperate children, forcing them, at best, into state schools where the teachers are often absent, drunk or incapable.

The campaign involves not only an alphabet soup of left-leaning charities from Action Aid to Amnesty International but also Unison and the National Union of Teachers (NUT). Their attacks are directed at Bridge International Academies, a private company backed by, among others, Bill Gates and the British government.

If Bridge set up bad schools that failed African pupils, the campaign would make sense. But it doesn’t. Bridge schools are good and improving education.

Founded by an American husband and wife about a decade ago, Bridge started with a single pilot project in a Nairobi slum and has grown to 600 schools across Kenya, three other African countries and India. Simply built and painted green, the schools are now a familiar sight in the poorest areas. Bridge makes no secret of its aim to one day make a profit by charging fees, albeit very low, but it will reach that stage only when it has grown its student population from the current 100,000 to half a million. The Bridge dream is to one day educate 10 million children.

I visited a Bridge school in the slums of Gilgil in Kenya’s Rift Valley. Gilgil is a mess of rusty tin shacks, open sewers and stinking rubbish. The parents I met were all desperately poor, but equally desperate that their children should be better off.