By Matina Stevis and Simon Clark
Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg invest in African education
MASII, Kenya—An army of teachers wielding Nook tablets and backed by investors including Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg is on a mission to bring inexpensive, private education to millions of the world’s poorest children.
In
rural Kenya, 6-year-old Sharon Ndunge, sitting in a rough-built
classroom with chicken-coop wire for windows, a tin roof and wooden
benches, is among 126,000 students enrolled at the more than 400 Bridge
International Academies that have sprung up across the country since the
company was founded in 2009.
Bridge’s founders are challenging
the long-held assumption that governments rather than companies should
lead mass education programs. The company’s goal is to eventually
educate 10 million children and make money by expanding its
standardized, Internet-based education model across Africa and Asia.
The Internet and Barnes & Noble Inc.
Nook tablets are used to deliver lesson plans, which are then used by
teachers. The tablets also are used to collect test results from
students scattered across hundreds of towns and villages and serve as a
means of monitoring their progress.
“It’s like running Starbucks,” said Greg Mauro,
a partner at California-based venture-capital firm Learn Capital LLC,
the largest shareholder in Bridge with a 15% stake, likening it to the
coffee chain with standardized systems and procedures that can be
replicated across new locations. If all goes to plan, the American-run,
Nairobi-based education startup will seek a stock-market listing in New
York in 2017, according to Mr. Mauro.
Mr. Mauro has invested alongside Microsoft co-founder Mr. Gates, e-Bay Inc. founder Pierre Omidyar’s Omidyar Network, textbook publisher Pearson
PLC and others who already have put more than $100 million into the
company, of which about 90% is equity investments, according to Bridge. Facebook Inc.
co-founder Mr. Zuckerberg this month invested $10 million in the
company, according to Bridge. The investment comes as the social-network
company expands into emerging markets to potentially reach billions of
new customers.
Mr. Gates saw “significant innovation in the approach and wanted to support it personally,” said a spokeswoman for Mr. Gates.
Bridge co-founder Shannon May
said Bridge is more cost-effective than state-funded Kenyan schools and
provides better teaching. Kenyan public schoolteachers spent an average
of two hours and 40 minutes teaching a day, according to a 2013 World
Bank report, and 45% of teachers weren’t doing their jobs: 16% were
absent from school, 27% were at school but not in class and 2% were in
class but not teaching. By contrast, Bridge said its teachers teach for
more than eight hours each day, and there is unexcused teacher
absenteeism of less than 1%.
Bridge’s revenue is in the “low
double digits” of millions of dollars, Ms. May said. She estimates it
will be $500 million in 10 years.
This lofty growth forecast for a company that hasn’t turned a profit rests on the hopes of people like Jacinda Ndunge,
Sharon’s mother, who spends $6.50 of her monthly $100 income from her
vegetable stall to send her daughter to Bridge. A big attraction for her
was more attentive teachers and a smaller class size than at a free
state school, she said. Bridge’s average class has 30 pupils. At some
Kenyan state schools, the student-to-teacher ratio is 100-to-1,
according to the teachers union.
“At state school, many times the teacher did not go to class,” Ms.
Ndunge said. “Sharon comes home with homework to do and is happy to go
to school.”
Bridge teachers on average make 10,000 Kenyan
shillings a month, about $110, less than half what state teachers make
but more than most other comparable schools, said Ms. May. There are
other private, inexpensive schools, most of which are religious or
organized by individual communities. Bridge said its advantage is that
the quality of education is better through the use of technology and
standardized procedures.
Last month, Bridge opened its first
seven schools in Uganda and plans another 65 or so by year-end. It then
plans to move into Nigeria by the end of 2015 and to India in the second
half of 2016.
To be sure, some critics said it is a step
backward for poor people to pay for education and question the
standardized teaching model.
“There’s something about it that flies in the face of progress,” said David Archer,
head of program development at Action Aid, a London-based nonprofit,
antipoverty organization who has campaigned for universal free education
for two decades. “There are individual needs of individual kids. Does
this standardization zeal actually give better education to children?”
Ms.
May defended Bridge’s teaching model. “Just because the class is
scripted doesn’t mean the tablet is restrictive,” Ms. May said.
“Children do interrupt with questions, teachers do go off script.”
Bridge’s
progress comes as for-profit companies play an ever-bigger role in
Africa’s development, seeking to make money through businesses that
often serve a social purpose. Private-equity fundraising for investment
in sub-Saharan Africa more than tripled to a record $4 billion in 2014
from the year before, according to the Washington-based Emerging Markets
Private Equity Association. Private-equity firms also have invested in
African health-care services, nurseries and for-profit universities.
Providing
education to Africa’s poorest has historically been the domain of
governments and charities. Ms. May, 38 years old, is an anthropologist
who first became interested in education as a means of lifting people
out of subsistence living in rural communities while she carried out
postdoctoral research in China.
Along with Bridge’s other
founders, she saw a business opportunity as the Kenyan government
struggled to keep up with booming enrollment rates.
Bridge’s
rapid expansion isn’t without potential roadblocks. “A big risk is that
Bridge grows too quickly and neglects quality,” said James Tooley, a professor of education policy at the U.K.’s Newcastle University and an advocate of low-cost private schools.
Ms.
May acknowledges growth comes with big and often unpredictable
challenges. When moving teachers to train in Uganda, for example, Bridge
staff got embroiled in a standoff with Ugandan authorities suspicious
that they were possibly transferring aspiring jihadists to training
camps. The situation was settled peacefully.
And in Kenya, Bridge
students almost missed an important national exam because there was no
government regulation in place dealing with how children not attending
traditional private or public schools take such tests. The incident was
eventually resolved.
“The biggest challenge that Bridge will face in any market is going to be regulatory,” said Amy Klement, a partner at Omidyar Network.
Investors
said the Nook tablet is at the heart of what makes Bridge work. All
class plans, tests and additional materials are uploaded on it. Teachers
manually enter test results through the tablet, and every piece of
information is stored electronically. Bridge also monitors teachers
through the tablet. For example, if a teacher doesn’t sign into the
tablet one day, Bridge can call the teacher to find out why.
“All Bridge’s systems have been designed with the view of getting to millions of students,” said David Easton, an investment director at CDC Group PLC, a London-based investor in Bridge.
A
2013 report commissioned by Bridge by an outside research firm
indicates Bridge students score better in literacy and numeracy tests
than peers attending nearby public schools.
But overall, separate
research doesn’t show an advantage of low-cost private schools over
state schools. A report by the U.K. government’s Department for
International Development found “little to no evidence” low-cost private
schools are better than state schools. The same department is an
investor in Bridge academies.
Write to Matina Stevis at matina.stevis@wsj.com and Simon Clark at simon.clark@wsj.com
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