Bridge Schools: Poor education for the poor?

When The Independent interviewed Griffin Asigo, the Regional Manager of Bridge Schools in Uganda, he said several District Education Officers (DEOs) have inspected a number of Bridge schools on various occasions and given them stamps of approval.

“They never raised any issues against our standards,” Asigo says. He mentions Tororo, Wakiso and Jinja.  Since management of primary education in Uganda is decentralised to the district, the DEOs are in charge.

On why the buildings at Bridge are low cost, perhaps reflecting the low budget nature of the schools, Asigo says schools, both in the private and public sector, have poorer facilities than the Bridge Academies.

“Where in the Education Act does it say we should have standard infrastructure?” he says, “We asked the Ministry to send a team to come and inspect our schools.”

According to Asigo, Bridge centres have been approved by licensing officers.

“From my knowledge, the approval starts from the grassroots, LC1, LCIIIs have recommended us for licensing. They have been to our schools and they appreciate what we are doing. Even the Assistant Commissioner at a regional level in Iganga district gave a report approving of the schools located in Mbale and Tororo.”

Schools not licensed

Getting a comment from the Iganga Commissioner was not possible. However when The Independent spoke to Tony Mukasa Lusambu, the Assistant Commissioner for Primary Education in the Ministry of Education it was a different story.

He said the Bridge Academies do not strictly adhere to what they say. He said they operate more schools than are registered by the ministry, use untrained and unregistered teachers, and breach teaching guidelines. He gave the example of a school in Mubende district that he visited.

“It was not licensed by the Ministry and not registered at all,” Lusambu says, “The DEO didn’t know about the school for starters. The teachers and head teachers did not even have certificates from the Ministry. To make it worse, I found them teaching during holiday time. I had to call the DEO to close it.”

A copy of an inspection report for the school in Mubende dated May 20 that was seen by The Independent says the Academy Manager of the Bridge school located at Kirungi Ward in Mubende had got a license from the Municipal Council of the district which has no authority to issue one.

The report written by the DEO Mubende, Benson Kayiwa, lists several charges against the school. It says: “There was no proven curriculum by National Curriculum Development Centre (NCDC) which the school was following; instead teachers were using ipads on which they claimed ‘Master Teachers’ in Kampala were preparing each and every thing for them which is schemes of work, lesson plans, lesson notes and send it to them via ipads.

“Teachers could not even open the ipads they were claiming to be using during teaching and learning process. No record of work neither class registers was available, apart from report forms which were in the Academic manager’s office.”

He recommended the school to employ a qualified and experienced primary teacher to head the school and that a joint inspection team comprised of Health, Community and Education departments should make a follow up inspection to assess the school worthiness before it opens for Term Two on June 6.

At the schools The Independent visited, the teachers were indeed conducting classes using instruction material on tablet computers. The same tablets are used by teachers to monitor attendance and receive instructions from their superiors every day.

Bridge also has an Android app where information on pupils, teachers, the school’s suppliers, classes and all management notices can be accessed. Asigo says this lowers the costs of running the academies, standardises the running operations, and tracks trends. He says through the tablets, management is done centrally in spite of the technology challenges some teachers are yet to adopt to.

Regarding the quality of teachers, Jackline Walumbe; the Senior Public Relations Officer for Bridge in East Africa, says the school’s mission is inclined towards nurturing people’s passions as opposed to headhunting for qualified professionals who often fail to deliver. She said the schools recruit individuals who are passionate and train them at their Academy in Mukono.

“We can take on people who are still at universities for as long as they show they are passionate about teaching,” she said adding that they emphasise passion because some qualified teachers have failed interviews.

Walumbe told The Independent that the recruitment is part of “empowering communities” and that the organisation prides in giving educational opportunities to the communities where it operates. A Bridge school at Ganda, 12km from Kampala city centre is typical. Phiona Akuya is the manager of the academy which sits on land about the size of an acre in a low income area. Walumbe says it is designed to cater for children in these communities by making the cost for education as low as possible. Bridge schools pupils from P 1-P3 pay Shs98, 300 per term while those in P4 and P5, Shs108, 500. This is about a tenth of the average fees in primary schools in Uganda.

But Bridge critics are unconvinced.

Mary Goretti Nakabugo, the Country Manager of Twaweza, a research organisation, recalls a session where she was launching the Twaweza Uwezo report and a lady from the Bridge schools made a presentation about passion being the key. She says passion is simply not enough for professionals especially teachers.

“It has to be both,” she told The Independent, “one has to combine the technical knowledge and passion. There are many passionate people out there who lack the requisite skills and knowledge and that cannot work in the long term.”