YOU DUNCES!
Fury as Uganda closes private schools we gave £5million in foreign aid
A STRING of schools partfunded by the British taxpayer have been closed down in Uganda amid claims of poor standards and insanitary conditions.
The 63 schools received £5.5million in UK aid over the past year – but Uganda’s High Court has ruled they had inadequate water supply and, in some cases, no proper toilets.
Questions have also been raised over the quality of teaching.
British officials hit back last night, claiming the decision had been ‘politically motivated’.
The ‘low-profit’ Bridge International Academies were opened last year, backed by Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates, Facebook tycoon Mark Zuckerberg and investment bank JP Morgan, as well as the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID).
The schools taught 12,000 pupils aged between four and 12, with parents paying £5 a month.
But earlier this year, a UN report into education in Uganda found that ‘private schools, in particular lowfee private schools, deliver the national education curriculum to students using poor-qualified or unqualified teachers’. UK aid officials were said to be ‘furious’ about the decision to close the Bridge International schools – while critics said it wa s another example of British cash being squandered overseas.
Alex Wild of the TaxPayers’ Alliance said: ‘This is yet another example of taxpayers’ money being wasted on well-intentioned projects abroad which don’t deliver results.
‘These botched projects not only let down those who need our help abroad but also hit hard-pressed families at home and seriously undermine the credibility of our aid programme. Authorities must be much smarter about vetting the viability of aid projects before signing off vast amounts of taxpayers’ money.’
The Mail on Sunday has previously revealed a series of scandals connected to the UK’s £12billion aid budget, some of which has gone to terrorists or been spent on teachers in Pakistan who do not exist. Following our campaign, 230,000 people signed an online petition calling on the Government to scrap its pledge to spend 0.7 per cent of our national income on overseas aid. A DFID source told The Mail on Sunday last night: ‘We have been supporting private sector education in Uganda because we don’t think the state sector is strong enough yet. We believe there is political motivation behind closing down these schools.’ The source also claimed that Bridge International Academies was not ‘given a proper hearing’ and not allowed to properly defend itself in court. She claimed the sanitation issue affected just one school and added: ‘To close all 63 schools is an incredibly unfair decision that deprives 12,000 children of a decent education.’ Andrew White, programme director of Bridge International Academies in Uganda, said: ‘We are extremely alarmed on behalf of parents about what will happen to their child’s education on Monday in the middle of term. ‘We do not believe the closure notice from the education ministry is legitimate and we will be appealing against the decision.’
UK taxpayers’ money was used to fund the Ugandan schools project – run by American couple Shannon May and Jay Kimmelman – via a £12million grant that DFID gave to Novastar, a venture catalyst firm based in Kenya, in 2014.
Bridge International has been criticised for charging for education while receiving millions in grants.