Publications

Article published in the journal The Lancet Early Childhood Development Series. Published Abstract: "Early childhood development programmes vary in coordination and quality, with inadequate and inequitable access, especially for children younger than 3 years. New estimates, based on proxy measures of stunting and poverty, indicate that 250 million children (43%) younger than 5 years in low-income and middle-income countries are at risk of not reaching their developmental potential. There is therefore an urgent need to increase multisectoral coverage of quality programming that incorporates health, nutrition, security and safety, responsive caregiving, and early learning. Equitable early childhood policies and programmes are crucial for meeting Sustainable Development Goals, and for children to develop the intellectual skills, creativity, and wellbeing required to become healthy and productive adults. In this paper, the first in a three part Series on early childhood development, we examine recent scientific progress and global commitments to early childhood development. Research, programmes, and policies have advanced substantially since 2000, with new neuroscientific evidence linking early adversity and nurturing care with brain development and function throughout the life course."

Article published in Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness. Published abstract: We evaluated a program to improve literacy instruction on the Kenyan coast using training workshops, semiscripted lesson plans, and weekly text-message support for teachers to understand its impact on students’ literacy outcomes and on the classroom practices leading to those outcomes. The evaluation ran from the beginning of Grade 1 to the end of Grade 2 in 51 government primary schools chosen at random, with 50 schools acting as controls. The intervention had an impact on classroom practices with effect sizes from 0.57 to 1.15. There was more instruction with written text and more focus on letters and sounds. There was a positive impact on three of four primary measures of children’s literacy after two years, with effect sizes up to 0.64, and school dropout reduced from 5.3% to 2.1%. This approach to literacy instruction is sustainable, and affordable and a similar approach has subsequently been adopted nationally in Kenya.

Recent attention has focused on the existence of non-government schools that cater to children from low-income families. These schools can now be found in the majority of developing countries, many of which have a prescribed public policy to provide free public education. This raises the question, why would a low-income family choose to send a child to a fee-paying school if a place in a free school were available? This paper will report on case studies of low-fee schools in Jamaica, Kenya, Tanzania, Ghana, Indonesia and Pakistan and will assess the reasons for their increased demand. In the past, some have argued that development assistance agencies should limit assistance to public school sector. Others have argued that the public sector is inadequate and in many ways has failed in its ambitions to provide a minimum quality for every child. This paper will consider what public policy should be toward low-cost private schools, including the policy of development assistance agencies which seek to assist low and middle income countries as well as the appropriate public policy for national and local governments. The paper will conclude with several recommendations. One recommendation is that although children from low-income families attend non-government schools, they continue to be citizens; hence they should not be excluded from poverty assistance strategies. A second recommendation is to expand government statistical functions so that non-government schools are regularly included in the calculations of enrollment rates. Lastly, the paper does not recommend voucher or other program of publically financed school choice on the grounds that the public sector should remain the main conduit for public schooling. It does, however, raise questions as to the limits of the public sector in delivering high quality schooling and whether these limits should be more candidly acknowledged.

This article reviews the development of the EGRA and EGMA, which are locally tailored, timely assessments designed to directly inform policy and instruction for learning improvement, particularly for countries on the lower end of the income spectrum. The history of the design and implementation of the tools as well as case studies of their use in Egypt and Kenya, are a useful counterbalance to the experience of the more traditional international large-scale assessments (ILSAs) documented in this special issue—in particular for understanding the needs of countries struggling to transform ‘education for all’ into ‘learning for all’.

Article published in the International Journal of Educational Development. Published abstract: "What should be considered when developing a literacy intervention that asks teachers to implement new instructional methods? How can this be achieved with minimal support within existing policy? We argue that two broad sets of considerations must be made in designing such an intervention. First, the intervention must be effective by bridging the gap between current teacher practice and the scientific literature on effective instruction. This broad consideration is detailed with 10 design recommenda- tions. Second, the intervention must be amenable to being scaled-up and mainstreamed as part of government policy. This involves being (i) simple and replicable; (ii) well received by teachers; and (iii) cost effective. The paper describes how these factors were considered in the design of a literacy intervention in government primary schools in coastal Kenya. It also includes reactions from teachers about the intervention and their change in knowledge."

Article published in the International Journal of Educational Development. Volume 40, January 2015, Pages 315–322. Published abstract: The rise and widespread adoption of the early grade reading assessment (EGRA) has produced an ample supply of critics and converts. This paper seeks to clarify the purpose of EGRA and its limitations. EGRA was created to inform education systems and programmes and alone, is not an intervention. Designed to measure some of the foundational literacy skills that readers need for beginning reading, EGRA is a collection of subtasks, each with a specific purpose. This paper includes a description and rationale for each subtask, as well as the conceptual framework that underpins the assessment. Key results from multiple surveys provide informative, grounded examples of how the assessment results are being used to inform both classroom practice and system-level policy. We conclude with a brief discussion on the potential uses of EGRA and similar oral assessments of early learning for informing the monitoring of the post-2015 education indicators.

Article published in Africa Education Review, Volume 12, 2015 - Issue 1. Published Abstract: Children from low-income families are at risk of learning outcome difficulties, particularly in literacy. Various studies link poor literacy results with performance later in primary and secondary school, and suggest that poverty, literacy skills and weak instructional methods combine to drastically limit the educational opportunities for many poor children. The Primary Math and Reading (PRIMR) Initiative was designed to support the learning gains of Class 1 and 2 pupils in seven counties across Kenya. PRIMR uses a randomised controlled trial design to establish the effect of its intervention and employs basic literacy measures to estimate causal effects. This study shows that PRIMR has been effective for children from low-income families and that early literacy interventions can mitigate socio-economic effects. The findings suggest that efforts to improve literacy outcomes for the poor should begin early in primary school. Strategies for ensuring that instruction is equitable across socio-economic status are advocated.

Article published in the Journal of Development Effectiveness, Volume 8, 2016 - Issue 3. Published Abstract: To improve learning outcomes, an intervention in Kenya called the Primary Math and Reading (PRIMR) Initiative provided pupil learning materials, teachers’ guides and modest teacher professional development in mathematics. This paper presents the causal impact of PRIMR’s mathematics intervention on pupil achievement indices for procedural and conceptual numeracy, using a differences-in-differences analytic strategy. The mathematics intervention produced modest, statistically significant results: generally similar results for males and females, a larger impact in grade 2 than grade 1, a larger impact in nongovernment schools than public schools, and smaller outcomes in mathematics than for English or Kiswahili. These findings have relevant policy implications in Kenya given an impending national mathematics programme.

Article published in Comparative Education Review. Published abstract: Research in sub-Saharan Africa investigating the effect of mother tongue (MT) literacy instruction at medium scale is limited. A randomized controlled trial of MT literacy instruction was implemented in 2013 and 2014 as part of the Primary Math and Reading (PRIMR) Initiative in Kenya. We compare the effect of two treatment groups—the base PRIMR program teaching literacy in English and Kiswahili and the PRIMR-MT program, which taught literacy in English, Kiswahili, and mother tongue—in two different language environments. Implementation of the MT program faced challenges because many educators were not speakers of the languages, some communities resisted mother tongue instruction, and some areas were more language heterogeneous. Effect sizes on MT literacy averaged between 0.3 and 0.6 standard deviations. The base PRIMR program also increased MT learning outcomes in some measures but had smaller effects than the PRIMR-MT program in oral reading fluency and comprehension.

Article published in Writing Systems Research. Published Abstract: Reading research suggests that script type and writing systems have a relationship with children’s ability to recognise letters, syllables and words. In Ethiopia, the scripts used for writing language differ by visual complexity and the psycholinguistic grain size of the script. The Ge’ez-script languages have alphasyllabic-based writing systems, while the Latin-script languages have phoneme-based writing systems. These differences in script and the differences in aspects of the writing system influence early reading acquisition. We exploited a large, regionally representative data set assessing a variety of early reading tasks in six Ethiopian languages to estimate the impact of script and aspects of writing system differences on early reading outcomes in the areas of letter identification, word reading, non-word decoding and story reading. We made comparisons between language outcomes using Ge’ez and Latin scripts, controlling for student background and school socio-economic status (SES). Additional analyses compared across-script and writing system differences within regions and gender. We found that Ethiopian script and writing system differences have implications for instructional methods for letter identification and word decoding.