Considering Teachers in the Tusome Literacy Programme in Kenya: Government Systems Implementation at National Scale

Research on the impact of literacy programs implemented in scale is scant in the developing world, and where it exists it is pessimistic about the program’s ability to improve learning outcomes. The primary problem has... [ view full abstract ]

Research on the impact of literacy programs implemented in scale is scant in the developing world, and where it exists it is pessimistic about the program’s ability to improve learning outcomes. The primary problem has consistently been poorly conceptualized teacher change mechanisms that ignore the adult learner nature of teachers, and poorly designed pre-service and in-service programmes. Previous programmes suffered due to low levels of national take-up by teachers and by overly complex implementation designs that made community leaders resistant to mandating large scale implementation of the program. The Tusome programme was designed in response to the pilot results from a 1400 school Primary Mathematics and Reading (PRIMR) initiative. PRIMR used several embedded randomized controlled trials to systematically investigate how a scaled up program would be most effective across a variety of key policy issues. This meant that the Tusome program was designed in response to evidence of how the Kenyan system would respond to large scale implementation, particularly for how the teacher change process would be managed. The impact of Tusome is estimated by comparing results from an external evaluator using repeated cross-sectional literacy results from 2015 and 2016, released in 2017. The comparison includes learning outcomes in several key measures for both English and Kiswahili, presenting impacts and effect sizes. We also analyse findings from teacher and head teacher questionnaires designed to investigate how the program is being implemented and the level of buy-in, and how teacher change is supported by the programme. The paper analyzes the Kenya’s National Tablets Programme, which provides details on the accountability system that accompanies Tusome and provides teachers with feedback and support using tablets, as well as national learning outcomes comparisons. This tablet programme is, to our knowledge, the largest scale ICT-based accountability system utilizing government structures supporting national scale literacy work. The results presented include the number of overall visits made by the instructional supervisors as well as investigation of how the overall impact of Tusome differs across different locations and demographic characteristics. The paper closes with recommendations for other large scale literacy and numeracy interventions working in developing countries.