Mail and Guardian Africa.png Liberia outsources entire education system to a private American firm Christine Mungai, Mail and Guardian Africa, 31 Mar 2016 IN January, Liberia's minister of education made a far-reaching announcement, which nevertheless has largely flown under the radar - until now, when a top UN official has come out strongly in opposition to it. Liberian education Minister George Werner announced that the entire pre-primary and primary education system would be outsourced to Bridge International Academies to manage. The deal will see the government of Liberia direct public funding for education to support services subcontracted to the private, for-profit, US-based company. A Bridge Classroom.jpg A Bridge Academy classroom. (Photo/ Bridge International Academies/ FB) Under the public-private arrangement, the company will pilot the programme in 50 public schools in 2016, as well as design curriculum materials, while phase two could have the company rollout mass implementation over five years, "with government exit possible each year dependent on provided performance from September 2017 onwards," the report from Liberia's FrontPage Newspaper said. "Eventually the Ministry of Education is aiming to contract out all primary and early childhood education schools to private providers who meet the required standards over five year period," the article states. "Teachers are robots that just read scripts off hand-held tablets" - "Teachers have only five weeks of training and rely on scripted, standardised lessons" (BIA photo) The UN's Special Rapporteur on the right to education, Kishore Singh, last week described it as "unprecedented at the scale currently being proposed and violates Liberia's legal and moral obligations." The UN official and human rights expert noted that provision of public education of good quality is a core function of the State. "Abandoning this to the commercial benefit of a private company constitutes a gross violation of the right to education," said Singh. From: <http://m.mgafrica.com/article/2016-03-31-liberia-plans-to-outsource-its-ent ire-education-system-to-a-private-company-why-this-is-a-very-big-deal-and-af rica-should-pay-attention/> http://m.mgafrica.com/article/2016-03-31-liberia-plans-to-outsource-its-enti re-education-system-to-a-private-company-why-this-is-a-very-big-deal-and-afr ica-should-pay-attention/ -- -- 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]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
