Since 2015, civil society groups have been mobilising to raise awareness on the impact of commercial schools such as Bridge International Academies. For instance, civil society shared its concerns about the World Bank’s investments in the expansion of fee-charging primary schools. A month before the Speech by World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim: Ending Extreme Poverty by 2030: The Final Push, several members from civil society organisations across the world met with senior education officials of the World Bank to specifically discuss the rise of fee-charging, private primary schools, the World Bank’s support to them, in particular, Bridge International Academies (BIA). Multiple reports examining BIA schools and their impact have been launched including: 

• September 2016: Schooling the poor profitably: The innovations and deprivations of Bridge International Academies in Uganda
• December 2016: Education International and Kenya National Union of Teachers release new report, ‘Bridge vs. Reality: a study of Bridge International Academies’ for-profit schooling in Kenya’
• 2017: From Free to Fee: Are For-Profit, Fee-Charging Private Schools The Solution For The World’s Poor?
• Please see more reports below under ‘Research and resources on NewGlobe/BIA’.

A number of media reports also commented on commercial schools. Notably, on 27 June 2017 a New York Times Magazine feature titled ‘Can a Tech Start-Up Successfully Educate Children in the Developing World?’ discussed BIA.

In 2018, civil society groups published an open letter to investors in BIA, outlining concerns and urging them to cease support. Since then, additional concerns and scandals have been highlighted in the media, including the reported electrocution death of a child in a BIA school in Kenya, major teacher pay cuts in Liberia and Kenya during COVID-19, and charges of fraud and theft brought against a former Bridge director in a previous role.

In 2019, more than 170 civil society organisations from 64 countries called on the World Bank Group to end support to for-profit private education. 

In 2020, the IFC committed to freeze investments in for-profit K-12 schools. 

Similar policy shifts have included the Global Partnership for Education’s decision in its 2019 Private Sector Strategy to prohibit funding to for-profit provision of core education services, and a 2018 resolution by the European Parliament declared the European Union and its Member States must not use development aid money to fund commercial private schools.

In March 2022, the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation (IFC) divested from BIA. The IFC invested a total of $13.5 million in BIA since 2014, with the intention of supporting the company’s expansion to other countries. In June 2022, the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation (IFC) decided to extend the 2020 freeze indefinitely when it announced that it will not resume its investments in K-12 private schools, following the release of an independent evaluation by the World Bank Independent Evaluation Group (IEG) on the IFC’s investments in this area.