Newglobe Schools Inc

Achieved impact

Impact achieved at exit: The original impact thesis centred around supporting NewGlobe Schools' (the then parent company of Bridge International) innovative model, which had proven potential to build a sustainable approach to educating children from extremely low-income households (below the $2 per day poverty line). Our investment aimed to bring quality education to over one million children and create 20,000 meaningful jobs in places where, at the time of our investment, the unemployment rate for the target demographic was very high.

At the time of exit (2022), NewGlobe Schools had performed well against our original impact thesis. After changing its business model from owning and running schools itself to supporting government school systems with educational technology, NewGlobe extended the scale of its reach and was on track to outperform our impact expectations of reaching one million students.

Stakeholders: In line with our expectations at entry, 100 per cent of NewGlobe students were from low-income households (living below $2 per day). Data showed that 89 per cent of NewGlobe employees came from extremely low-income households, and 61 per cent of whom were female.

Scale of impact: When we first invested in 2013, NewGlobe Schools had 60,880 students and expected the number of students to increase to more than 890,000 by the end of 2020. NewGlobe schools currently reach millions of students through public-private partnership contracts.

In terms of job creation, at the point of exit NewGlobe employed 5,552 individuals, which was in line with its new business model of working with government-employed teachers instead of directly employing teachers, which would have required a higher rate of employment, as envisaged in the impact case. At the time of exit, NewGlobe was serving 1,003 government schools.

Quality of learning outcomes: There was evidence that NewGlobe’s approach to elementary education was effective. An academic study found that primary students (through to Grade 8 in NewGlobe's Kenya programme) gained almost an additional year of learning (0.89) under the NewGlobe integrated methodology; learning in two years what their peers learnt in nearly three.

Environmental and social management: We worked alongside other investors – such as IFC and Novastar – to enhance NewGlobe Schools' management of environmental and social issues, including through an initial action plan which focused on life and fire safety; occupational health and safety; labour management; developing an anonymous grievance mechanism; water, sanitation and hygiene standards; the structural integrity of the school estate; and food safety. We also subsequently focused closely on child safeguarding, including with the support of specialist consultancies using international child safeguarding standards.