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Primary school enrolment in low-income countries has increased in recent years. The quality of education is, however, still a cause for concern. Better measurement of early reading progress has been suggested as a means of improving education quality. Benchmarks based on the number of 'words per minute' (WPM) students are able to read correctly have been proposed as a basis for assessment and comparison, even where languages and orthographies differ. This paper explores the extent to which...

This paper investigates the perceptions of teachers from one Sabaot dominated primary school in western Kenya regarding the medium of instruction (MoI) policy in different class levels. While their ‘ideal’ MoI policy bears some resemblance to the official policy which advocates mother tongue (MT) as medium in lower primary and English in upper primary, it also has significant differences because of the teachers' desire to move learners as quickly as possible from MT to Kiswahili and English....

This paper investigates the perceptions of teachers from one Sabaot dominated primary school in western Kenya regarding the medium of instruction (MoI) policy in different class levels. While their "ideal" MoI policy bears some resemblance to the official policy which advocates mother tongue (MT) as medium in lower primary and English in upper primary, it also has significant differences because of the teachers' desire to move learners as quickly as possible from MT to Kiswahili and English....

This paper reports on an ethnographic case study which was carried out in a Kenyan first-grade classroom. The classroom had 89 students with their 2 teachers who taught at different times. The classroom was very crowded and had a high paucity of literacy materials. The study was guided by sociocultural and dialogic frameworks which maintain that social and dialogic interactions have important roles to play in a child's literacy and language development. Thus, the social life of the observed...

Primary school enrollments have increased rapidly in sub-Saharan Africa, spurring concerns about low levels of learning. We analyze field experiments in Kenya and Uganda that assessed whether the Reading to Learn intervention, implemented by the Aga Khan Foundation in both countries, improved early-grade literacy as measured by common assessments. We find that Ugandan literacy (in Lango) increased by 0.2 standard deviations. We find a smaller effect (0.08) on a Swahili literacy test in...

Mother tongue education (MTE) has been a subject of rigorous debate for more than half a century, in both industrialised and developing societies. Despite disparate views on MTE, there is an uneasy consensus on its importance in educational systems, especially in the foundational years. Using the Language Management Framework, the article provides a critical appraisal of MTE discourses in relation to primary teacher education and the quota system of student teacher selection and teacher...

In East Africa, there is great effort directed toward ensuring that there is learning and value for money invested in universal education policies initiated over the past decade. Kenya and Uganda are two countries that typify this effort. The effort includes the work of research organisations such as Uwezo, which assess learning levels; RTI, which assesses language and early grade reading; and the work of African Population and Health Research Center (APHRC), which looks at schooling...

In East Africa, there is great effort directed toward ensuring that there is learning and value for money invested in universal education policies initiated over the past decade. Kenya and Uganda are two countries that typify this effort. The effort includes the work of research organisations such as Uwezo, which assess learning levels; RTI, which assesses language and early grade reading; and the work of African Population and Health Research Center (APHRC), which looks at schooling...

JiFUNzeni blended learning approach is a sustainable approach to provision of professional development (PD) for those in challenging educational contexts. JiFUNzeni approach emphasizes training regional experts to create blended learning content, working with appropriate technology while building content repositories. JiFUNzeni approach was field-tested though a design-based research intervention conducted in rural western Kenya. The field test included design, development and implementation...

There is a dearth of literature that use research design for causal inference that estimate the effect of information and communications technology (ICT) programs on literacy outcomes in early primary, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa. There are several programs that have used ICT at a large scale, including Los Angeles, Peru, Nicaragua, Rwanda and an ongoing program in Turkey. Seldom have the studies directly estimated the effect of the ICT program on learning, as the measures used have...

Language policy is generally seen as a national-level decision regarding which languages the state will support, and in which public domains. However, the reality is that language policy plays out at regional and local levels as well. In fact, it could be argued that the most important instantiations of language policy are those which directly determine local-language behaviors in institutions such as schools, government and civil society. Using data drawn from Kenya, this article examines...

Language policy is generally seen as a national-level decision regarding which languages the state will support, and in which public domains. However, the reality is that language policy plays out at regional and local levels as well. In fact, it could be argued that the most important instantiations of language policy are those which directly determine local-language behaviors in institutions such as schools, government and civil society. Using data drawn from Kenya, this article examines...

Language policy is generally seen as a national-level decision regarding which languages the state will support, and in which public domains. However, the reality is that language policy plays out at regional and local levels as well. In fact, it could be argued that the most important instantiations of language policy are those which directly determine local-language behaviors in institutions such as schools, government and civil society. Using data drawn from Kenya, this article examines...

If children do not learn how to read in the first few years of primary school, they will struggle to complete the cycle and are at greater risk of dropping out. It is therefore crucial to identify and test interventions that have the potential of making a large impact, can be implemented quickly, and are affordable to be taken to scale by the Kenyan government. This is the goal of the PRIMR Initiative--to test various options for improving learning outcomes and instruction in Kenyan schools,...

Research shows that fathers' level of education predicts achievement of both boys and girls, with significantly greater effect for boys. Similarly, mothers' level of education predicts the achievement of girls but not boys. This study tests the mother–child education achievement hypothesis, by examining the effect of mothers' education on the maths test score of children, using data from 71 schools across 6 districts in Kenya. The findings of a multilevel random intercept model, based on a...

The article discusses a grassroots approach to innovation in literacy education, in which change comes from teachers themselves. Examples of innovations such as the involvement of Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o in Kenya in the 1960s to introduce African literature into the nation's schools, the weekly meetings of the Philadelphia Teachers Learning Cooperative (PTLC) to analyze student data, and the efforts of Gerald and María Paula in building a social-justice-oriented community center, are examined.

This study examined primary school students' reading motivation and performance on the standardized exam. Participants included 901 seventh and eighth grade students from Kenya. There were 468 females and 433 males. Contrary to previous studies, results showed reading challenge and aesthetics, but not efficacy, predicted reading achievement, indicating reading motivation may not influence achievement similarly across cultures. Gender differences were found in reading achievement but not...

This paper starts with an analysis of the twin purposes of an examination reform programme originally launched in Kenya during the 1970s: first, to broaden the spectrum of cognitive skills being tested; and second, to set up a feedback system based on the performance profiles, providing schools and teachers with guidance as to how pedagogy and learning might be strengthened. Then, in a change of time perspective, the paper looks back over 30 years of implementation experience, examining the...

Kenya must invest more in education to realize her vision 2030. The government commitment to Education for All's goal has been expressed through provision of basic education in pre-primary, primary and secondary school levels. To this end, the government introduced two kitties; Free Primary Education in 2003 and Subsidized Secondary Education in 2008 (where the government paid tuition fees for the students in secondary schools), but left parents to finance Early Childhood Development and...

This article details a pilot program of mother tongue instruction in five primary schools for classes one through three, in Kajokeji County, Central Equatoria State, South Sudan. The program was launched by teachers and volunteers with the support of the Jesuit Refugee Service, an international non-governmental organization. The research examines how mother tongue education impacted teaching and learning during one academic term. The article discusses the reasons for mother tongue education...