Working with Kimmelman, an experienced ed-tech innovator who co-founded the Web-based student assessment platform Edusoft in 2000, May launched Bridge in 2008. The couple decided to launch the endeavor in Kenya, where the statistics tell a grim tale. A World Bank Service Delivery Indicators report in 2013 highlights a litany of factors: Every day, children in Kenyan public schools receive 1 hour and 9 minutes less teaching time than their private counterparts. Across a term (semester) this equates to 20 days less of teaching time. Teacher-student ratios are lower, and frequently the teachers fail to show up at all.

Service Delivery Indicators at a Glance

World Bank

Even when the teachers do come to class, it’s unclear how much they’re offering the children. The same report showed that only 35 percent of Kenya’s public school teachers showed “mastery of the curriculum they teach.” Seniority did not correlate with greater competence. As Kimmelman explained, there’s very little regulation of the teaching profession: “A teacher is just put in a classroom and told, ‘Okay, teach, let’s see how well you do by the end of the year.’”



Previous attempts to solve this problem have been expensive, and ineffective. According to the same report: “The government spends more than any of its neighbors. There’s a disconnect between Kenya’s spending on education and learning outcomes. More of the same is not enough.”

With public schools in such struggling condition, the country has seen a rise in private schooling over the past decade. Enrollment has grown from 4 percent in 2005 to 12 percent currently. GEMS Cambridge International School, a private schooling company that currently operates in 14 countries worldwide, charges almost $6,500 a year for kindergarten, and that figure grows exponentially as a child moves from grade to grade. In a country where half the population lives on less than a dollar a day, even less-expensive private schools are rarely an option.

This is where Bridge has found its niche: somewhere between the exorbitantly expensive private schools and the absentee-ridden public ones. With a tuition of $6 a month, has positioned itself as an affordable alternative, offering the quality of a private school without the cost.

Mukhtar Abdi Olge, a national coordinator at the Kenyan National Examinations Council, laments “pathetic” teacher commitment in public schools and praises Bridge’s efforts: “They are not only fixing all the aforementioned challenges but also, in each day of their success, shame the government officials and teachers in public schools.”

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While the scale of Bridge’s expansion is aggressive, it’s the company’s methodology—known as “scripted instruction”—that’s causing the most controversy. Before the first academy opened, Bridge purchased tablets wholesale (they used Nooks when I visited but Bridge are brand agnostic), modifying them with their own software. The goal was to not only provide the teachers with detailed instructions but also monitor their performance. Teachers must check in via their tablets when they arrive and run their lessons almost verbatim from the tablet’s lesson scripts. Back at Bridge’s Nairobi offices and Massachusetts-based headquarters, all the data is compiled and analyzed. With their company issued smartphones in tow the Academy Managers (the “principals” at the schools so to speak) are in constant contact with headquarters. Their phones also moonlight as a modem for the tablets, syncing various data including: lesson plans, tardiness and test scores. Whenever teachers arrive late to school, miss a class, or even take too long to scroll through a specific lesson, it’s all tracked by Bridge’s “Master Teachers”—the moniker given to members of the company’s analytic team—in nearly real time.