Throughout sub-Saharan Africa, many children read below grade level. Overcrowded classrooms, poor teacher training, and little family support for student learning play a role in poor learning, but the problem often begins before children start primary school. Many children do not enter school with the cognitive, social-emotional and other skills needed to start learning. Policy makers are looking for ways to increase school readiness and promote pre-literacy skills to ensure that all children have the foundation they need to succeed in the classroom.
Research area: |
Early Childhood Nutrition, Development, and Health |
Country: |
Kenya |
Evaluation sample: |
Seventy-three communities, all located within two hours of Kisumu Town, in the Luo-speaking rural areas of western Kenya. Thirty-six communities (including 1,016 caregivers and 1,267 children between the ages of 36 and 83 months) were assigned to treatment, and 37 communities (including 997 caregivers and 1,260 eligible children) were assigned to control. |
Timeline: |
2015-2019 |
Intervention: |
Training parents in reading strategies that are engaging for children; free children¡¯s books |
Researchers: |
Lia Fernald, University of California at Berkeley; Pamela Jakiela, University of Maryland; Heather Knauer, University of Michigan; Owen Ozier, World Bank |
Partners: |
Early Learning Partnership (ELP), with support from Echidna Giving |
Results: |
Evaluation ongoing. Endline data to be collected in 2019 and results analyzed thereafter. Baseline activities: between June 8 and December 21 of 2017, the EMERGE field team conducted baseline surveys of 2,013 caregivers and 2,527 children aged 36 to 83 months. |
Problem
Kenya has one of the best education systems among low-income countries in sub-Saharan Africa. Yet many students aren¡¯t learning at grade level -- the 2011 found that nearly seven out of 10 students in third grade cannot read at even a second-grade level. A in Nyanza province, western Kenya, found only four percent of children under the age of five live in households where at least three books are present.