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Bill Gates’s Uganda Shack Schools Condemned in Teachers’ Report James Tweedie, The Morning Star, London, 5 October 2016 Teaching unions will release a damning report today into Uganda’s chain of private shack schools that is backed by software and dotcom billionaires. Education International will launch the exposé of Bridge International Academies (BIA) in Ugandan capital Kampala on World Teachers’ Day. BIA is taking the government to court over Education Minister Janet Museveni’s decision, temporarily suspended by a judge, to close its 63 schools in the country. Ms Museveni gave the order after inspections revealed poor sanitation at the schools was putting the health of BIA’s 12,000 fee-paying pupils at risk, while the firm was employing unqualified teachers and not following the national curriculum. Education International general secretary Fred van Leeuwen called on Uganda to “remain steadfast in demanding that Bridge International Academies operates in accordance with Ugandan legislative and regulatory requirements. “Every child deserves to be taught by a qualified teacher delivering an engaging curriculum in safe schools conducive to good teaching and learning.” Report co-author Curtis Riep, arrested in Uganda at BIA’s request in May, will not be at the launch after being advised not to attend for “security reasons.” The report, provided to the Morning Star in advance, reveals that 80 to 90 per cent of BIA’s teachers are unqualified and paid extremely low wages. Lessons are held in the rough corrugated-iron shack schools with chicken-wire windows dubbed “chicken coops for kids” by the firm’s own managers. BIA delivers its “academy-in-a-box” with pre-programmed curricula transferred to tablet e-readers — “teacher-computers.” Every teaching activity is pre-set and scripted, including instructing teachers when to “pause” when to “circulate for 30 seconds,” when to “rub the board” and when to tell pupils to “close your textbooks.” While sold as affordable good-quality private education, sending one child to a BIA school for a year costs a quarter of average household income, and school dropout rates range from 10 to 60 per cent. BIA is bankrolled by Microsoft founder Bill Gates, the world’s richest man, fellow billionaires Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook and Pierre Omidyar of Ebay — and the British government’s Department for International Development. In addition to Ugandan, Kenyan and Indian operations, the firm won a Liberian government tender to provide education from last month. From: http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/a-7764-Uganda-Bill-Gatess-shack-schools-c ondemned-in-teachers-report#.V_R76_l9600 __________ Information from ESET NOD32 Antivirus, version of virus signature database 14228 (20161005) __________ The message was checked by ESET NOD32 Antivirus. http://www.eset.com -- -- You are subscribed. This footer can help you. Please POST your comments to [email protected] or reply to this message. You can visit the group WEB SITE at http://groups.google.com/group/yclsa-eom-forum for different delivery options, pages, files and membership. To UNSUBSCRIBE, please email [email protected] . You don't have to put anything in the "Subject:" field. You don't have to put anything in the message part. All you have to do is to send an e-mail to this address (repeat): [email protected] . --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "YCLSA Discussion Forum" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send an email to [email protected]. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/yclsa-eom-forum. To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/yclsa-eom-forum/002401d21ed3%242f1f5140%248d5df3c0%24%40com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
