Last week, ARK and our partner PEAS hosted a delegation of senior Ministry of Education officials from Uganda and Zambia. The group came together for an ARK-hosted workshop on Public Private Partnerships (PPP) for education, where we discussed the rationale for the policy, its potential scope as well as important principles that policy makers should bear in mind when designing new education frameworks. Experts from ARK Schools ran specialist sessions on legal, financial, human resources and infrastructure issues to answer the group’s technical questions.
A visit to ARK Globe Academy The delegation went on a series of education-related visits, kick started with a trip to ARK Globe Academy and an impressive presentation from the school’s confident and charming student council. The group was particularly inspired by how strong leadership and ARK’s high expectations of students can be leveraged to turn around a school’s performance. After Globe, there were visits to Ofsted, Ofqual and the Department for Education to understand the academies policy from the government’s perspective.
Inspired by impact in the UK to deliver changes One delegate said they now feel “empowered to make positive changes in Uganda”, and that they want to “put the best practices from the UK’s experience of the academies policy to good use.”
This was the inaugural event for ARK’s newly formed PPP Practice – where we hope to use our understanding of the UK’s academy framework to support governments and school operators around the world to create effective public-private partnerships in education.