How might edtech market making of the sort that Bridge International Academies advances impact the role of the teacher?
Bridge International Academies (BIA) explicitly states that their model “does not require qualified teachers.” Instead, they claim that anyone can deliver pre-scripted lessons using tablets. In doing so, they strip away the essence of what it means to be a teacher. But what is the essence of a teacher?
What is the role of the teacher?
Who better to answer that than students? I asked my three children—ages 4, 10, and 12—what they liked about having their teacher in class with them. Initially, they were perplexed by the idea that a teacher wouldn’t be with them, but then they warmed up to the discussion.
My Year 6 daughter said:
Mr Gary understands me and always asks me how my day was. He helped me with my friendship group when we stopped talking, by listening to us and asking questions.
My Early Years 4 son responded by sharing how much he loved his teacher and how she sometimes shares her lunch with him when he doesn’t like the school meal.
My Year 7 son reflected on how his teacher provides “educational and emotional support and knows what I need when I need it,” which was mind-blowing to me.
This feedback underscores that teachers are not just there to relay content; they are mentors, guides, and, at times, the very individuals who change the trajectory of a student’s life.
Take my father as an example. At 16, with the pressure to study medicine, he struggled with Maths and Science. One teacher took extra time to help him after school. Because of that teacher, my father not only passed his exams but went on to earn two prestigious medical degrees and eventually became a surgeon. If he had been taught by a tablet or an AI assistant, perhaps he would have passed his exams, but he wouldn’t have had that human connection. To this day, he credits that teacher for changing his life’s trajectory. My father opened a tutoring business—an embodiment of Biesta’s (2010) theory of subjectification—giving back to the community and inspiring others in the same way his teacher had inspired him.
Market Making – Demand vs Supply
From a marketing perspective, I cannot deny that BIA’s strategy was incredibly proactive and precise. They identified a massive demand—parents willing to pay a fee for an education that could improve their child’s future—and they capitalised on it.
In theory, what BIA did—offering education to families earning under $2 a day at a fraction of that cost—could be viewed as a response to an unmet need. Why was this left to foreign private investors and entrepreneurs? Why did the Ugandan and Kenyan governments not recognise this demand and address it themselves?
According to a UNESCO report:
Of all regions, sub-Saharan Africa has the highest rates of education exclusion. Over one-fifth of children between the ages of about 6 and 11 are out of school, followed by one-third of youth between the ages of about 12 and 14. According to UIS data, almost 60% of youth between the ages of about 15 and 17 are not in school.
These statistics are depressing and shocking and perhaps BIA was merely trying to find a solution that would help to tackle this crisis in a ‘mass’ way? The concept was good, however, the delivery was appalling.
Reschooling gone wrong?
BIA’s model does not require real teachers—they are merely components of a reschooling design (Freire, 1970). The commodification of teaching reduces educators to nothing more than metrics. Teachers are no longer valued for their ability to inspire or nurture students; instead, they are judged by how many children are in their class, how much in fees they collect, and how many registrations they bring in. This undermines the professional integrity of teaching, converting it from a transformational role into a transactional one (a key concern raised by educators in my previous blog post about the broken education system).
One of the primary responsibilities of any school is safeguarding children. In most schools, teachers are rigorously vetted and trained to ensure they can support students’ emotional, social, and academic needs. At BIA, this responsibility is alarmingly overlooked.
Discursive Closure and the Impact on Teaching
By incorporating technology—tablets for both learning and admissions—BIA constructed a discourse of progress, presenting a vision of an Africa that was modernising and keeping pace with global education trends. However, their model perpetuates a pedagogical discourse that suggests scripted lessons and technology are all children need.
This creates discursive closure, shutting down alternative methods or innovations. The best learning happens through challenge, debate, and critical reasoning—none of which would be possible using BIA’s rote, one-size-fits-all curriculum.
Education is about more than memorising facts or passing exams; it’s about nurturing the whole child—fostering resilience, curiosity, and critical thinking (Biesta, 2010). There is no Multi-Tiered Systems of Support (MTSS) or personalisation in BIA’s model. The teacher-student relationship; the very foundation of effective education, is erased.
Charisma, Marketing, and White Saviourism
BIA relies heavily on charisma marketing. The founders—two Harvard graduates—present themselves as visionaries bringing education to the underserved in Africa and Asia. Their approach is steeped in white saviourism, wrapped in slogans like “Knowledge for All”—an appealing narrative for philanthropists and investors, including Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, and even the World Bank (which withdrew funding in March 2022).
The curriculum itself was not indigenous to the regions it served. Instead, it imposed Western pedagogy and values, prioritising standardisation over individuality. It is difficult not to see the absurdity—a group of white Americanmen deciding what African children should learn, how they should learn it, where they should learn it and calling it progress.
Take the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) initiative, which follows the same pattern. An MIT professor decides that all poor African children should own a laptop, and few question the why, how, what, or where. Pischetola (2021) critiques such models through the lens of Techno-Determinism, Techno-Solutionism, and Techno-Instrumentalism, all of which apply to BIA’s approach.
Devaluing the ‘Human-ness’ in Education
BIA’s market-making strategy has reduced the role of the teacher to that of a scripted facilitator, prioritising profit over pedagogy and commodifying education in a way that eliminates the human connection at the heart of great teaching.
While charismatic marketing and technological imaginaries may attract investors, they come at the cost of education’s true purpose: to empower and inspire students.
In reimagining the role of EdTech, we must ensure that technology supports teachers, not replaces them. Teachers are not interchangeable components in a machine—they are mentors, guides, and life-changers. No AI is going to share their lunch with my child when they are hungry, help my 10 year old daughter navigate friendship group dramas or help me figure out what is going on in my 12 year old son’s brain as he enters his teenage years!
References
*Aronson, Brittany. (2017). The White Savior Industrial Complex: A Cultural Studies Analysis of a Teacher Educator, Savior Film, and Future Teachers. Journal of Critical Thought and Praxis. 6. 36-54. 10.31274/jctp-180810-83.
Hello Nishel,
This is indeed a critical account of Bridge Academies and One Laptop Per Child (OPLC) initiatives here, you have highlighted some of the significant issues that have emerged as Edtech companies have sought to make markets and income-generating opportunities in education. Backing up these significant issues with references to other research and theory, and your own personal experience with young learners.
In addressing the week’s thematic question, I have especially liked your statement that…….“By incorporating technology—tablets for both learning and admissions—BIA constructed a discourse of progress, presenting a vision of an Africa that was modernising and keeping pace with global education trends. However, their model perpetuates a pedagogical discourse that suggests scripted lessons and technology are all that children need”.
You also indicate that ……….the teacher-student relationship; is the very foundation of effective education, is erased. I would like to add that, in this teacher-student relations framing, questions about what kind of teaching is possible in a commodified and scripted education system need to be addressed.
The scripting of …“the official curriculum, as scripted knowledge for exchange” (Apple, 2003), and “as a marketable object of trade”… endangers the teacher curriculum interpretation and meaningful co-creation. In effect re-framing and altering teacher identity, role and purpose.
The agenda and ideologies of some of the Edtech companies are anchored in reschooling and deschooling agendas, with technological solutionism and assemblages, all of which need to be examined so as to establish what roles they imagine for teachers, what relationships they envision between and among teachers and learners and the forms of human interaction that can be limited with such solutions.
I look forward to a creative critique at the end where you suggest a possible alternative or pathway, a policy action, a system improvement or an actor-network for leveraging improvement, or altering the relations. As you develop your approach to creative critique, you might want to draw on existing research about policy networks, and about the social actors that surround, support and enable any kind of technology-based approach to education.
And in all our academic writing, please note that, we use the Harvard referencing system (https://www.bristol.ac.uk/arts/exercises/referencing/referencing%20skills/page_24.htm)