Search

Previous large-scale education technology interventions have shown only modest impacts on student achievement. Building on results from an earlier randomized controlled trial of three different applications of information and communication technologies (ICTs) on primary education in Kenya, the Tusome Early Grade Reading Activity developed the National Tablets Program. The National Tablets Program is integrated into the Tusome activity by providing tablets to each of more than 1,200 instructional coaches in the country to use when they visit teachers. This enables a national database of classroom instructional quality, which is used by the education system to monitor overall education quality. The tools provided on the tablets are designed to help coaches increase the quality of their instructional support to teachers, and deepen the shallow accountability structures in Kenya's education system. Using results of a national survey, we investigated the ability of the National Tablets Program to increase the number of classroom observations done by coaches and to improve student learning outcomes. Survey results showed high levels of tablet program utilization, increased accountability, and improvements in learning outcomes. We share recommendations regarding large-scale ICT interventions and literacy programs.

Currently, more than 25 million people across the globe live as refugees, having been driven from their countries of origin by crises and conflicts. Although the right to education is articulated in global agreements, national education systems in the host countries are primarily responsible for refugee children's instruction. In one of the first studies of its kind, we assessed all the schools providing lower primary education to refugee children in Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya, one of the largest and oldest refugee camps in the world at the time of data collection. The outcomes for these students were concerningly low, even lower than for those of disadvantaged children in the host community, Turkana County. Literacy outcomes differed among the refugee children, depending on their country of origin, the language of instruction used at the school in Kenya, the languages spoken at home, and the children's self-professed expectation of a return to their country of origin. Our findings point to the urgent need to invest heavily in improving learning among refugee children, rather than focusing solely on their access to education.

Most of what is known about the association between children's executive function (EF) and school readiness skills is derived from research conducted in Western countries. We tested whether these associations were evident in a middle-income country context. Participants were 1,480 children, aged 4-7 years old, who participated in an endline assessment of the Tayari program, an early childhood education (ECE) model that is being delivered by the Kenyan education system. High rates of task completion, low rates of floor effects, and high rates of assessor quality ratings supported the feasibility of large-scale direct assessments of EF with young children. Assessor ratings of children's attention-related behaviors during testing were positively associated with their performance on EF tasks (rs = 0.12-0.27). An EF composite score was not related to demographic factors or to children's exposure to the Tayari program. However, the EF composite score was uniquely associated with performance-based measures of early literacy ([beta] = 0.18, 95% confidence interval [CI] = 0.05, 0.31), early numeracy ([beta] = 0.16, 95% CI = 0.07, 26), and social-emotional competencies ([beta] = 0.12, 95% CI = 0.03, 0.20), even after adjustment for multiple covariates. These results are discussed with respect to the ways in which EF skills inform ongoing efforts to invest in ECE in low- and middle-income countries.