This "At A Glance" guide presents an overview of the Kenya Tayari program in Kenya. This four year program has supported the Kenyan Ministry of Education and County Governments to improve quality of early childhood development and education (ECDE) for over 240,000 young children.

This brochure describes the CIFF-funded Kenya Tayari program, which aimed to improve the quality of pre-primary education in four counties in Kenya.

This brochure describes the CIFF-funded Kenya Tayari program, which aimed to improve the quality of pre-primary education in four counties in Kenya.

‘Tayari’, a Swahili word meaning ‘ready’, aims to increase the proportion of pre-primary children transiting to primary school with requisite school readiness competencies. The expected result of the Tayari pilot program is improved learning outcomes. The program impacts approximately 130,000 children in 2,200 early childhood centers in Kenya within four selected counties, namely: Uasin Gishu, Laikipia, Nairobi and Siaya. Tayari implemented the pilot program over four years by working with government officers to strengthen the existing pre-primary system. This compilation of Tayari success stories has been documented by the staff who implemented the program implementing staff. The success stories demonstrate the impact the program has had on its beneficiaries and highlights their experiences. It contains stories from teachers (who are the real classroom implementers), coaches and Sub-County Early Childhood Development and Education officers that have seen how Tayari has positively influenced teachers, learners and the larger community.

EF Touch is a tablet-administered assessment designed to measure children’s three key executive function skills: working memory, inhibitory control, and cognitive flexibility. These functions are important for organizing information, planning, solving problems, sustaining attention, and coordinating action and thoughts in support of goal-directed behaviors. Consequently, these functions are integral to children’s ability to learn how to learn. Most of what we know about executive functions has been gathered from studies in high-income countries. However, EF Touch is now being adapted and tested with young children living in LMICs, including Kenya and Liberia.

Interest inmeasuring executive function skills in young children in lowand middle-income country contexts has been stymied by the lack of assessments that are both easy to deploy and scalable. This study reports on an initial effort to develop a tablet-based battery of executive function tasks, which were designed and extensively studied in the United States, for use in Kenya. Participants were 193 children, aged 3–6 years old, who attended early childhood development and education centers. The rates of individual task completion were high (65–100%), and 85% of children completed three or more tasks. Assessors indicated that 90% of all task administrations were of acceptable quality. An executive function composite score was approximately normally distributed, despite higher-than-expected floor and ceiling effects on inhibitory control tasks. Children’s simple reaction time (β = –0.20, p = .004), attention-related behaviors during testing (β = 0.24, p = .0005), and age (β = –0.24, p = .0009) were all uniquely related to performance on the executive function composite. Results are discussed as they inform efforts to develop valid and reliable measures of executive function skills among young children in developing country contexts.

CIES 2018 Presentation, given by Yasmin Sitabkhan. The purpose of this presentation is to explore the applicability of the direct instruction (DI) model (also known as the “I do, We do, You do” model) for early grades mathematics instruction in low-income contexts through data gathered on two projects, the Tayari Early Childhood Project in Kenya and the Liberia Teacher Training Project (LTTP2). The results from the two studies point to the effectiveness of the gradual release of responsibility model for early mathematics instruction. The model as it is, with an explicit I do, we do, and you do” section for each concept, does not align with best practices in early mathematics instruction. However, the workshop model, which essentially is a “we do, you do” model, may foster more productive instruction that encourages critical thinking and problem-solving behavior.

CIES 2018 Presentation, given by Ben Piper. While there has been recent evidence pointing to the efficacy and cost-effectiveness of pre-primary interventions, there remains little known about how those interventions might work at medium or national scale, nor whether the theoretical impacts of the programs increase, decrease or remain steady over time, nor whether the gains persist into primary school. The endline results from two years of Tayari’s intervention provide longitudinal data on nearly 2500 children who have been evaluated across a range of early learning skills (literacy, numeracy, socio-emotional) at three data points, including their first year of Grade 1. The results presented will explain how Tayari program impacts change over these three data points and determine whether Tayari’s impact persists into Grade 1.

CIES 2018 Presentation, given by Ben Piper. Tusome is supporting the Ministry’s systems to increase the utilization of monitoring data, and to expand the accountability structures of the government using the data provided by the national literacy program. Of particular interest is the classroom observation data collected by government-paid coaches, in Kenya these officers are called Curriculum Support Officers (CSOs). The data presented in this panel shows how the instructional support structures in Kenya have worked over time, with particular interest in the availability and usage of classroom support data.

CIES 2018 Presentation, given by Ben Piper. This paper examines the influence of Mother Tongue (MT) as a medium of instruction in lower primary schools in 4 zones of Machakos County based on the PRIMR program. The relationship between MT implementation at the classroom level and its impact on pupil’s literacy outcomes are explored.