Improving Early-Grade Literacy in East Africa: Experimental Evidence from Kenya and Uganda

Adrienne Lucas, Patrick McEwan, Moses Ngware and Moses Oketch
Additional contact information
Moses Ngware: African Population and Health Research Center
Moses Oketch: African Population and Health Research Center

No 13-03, Working Papers from University of Delaware, Department of Economics

Abstract: 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 program, 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 0.2s. We find a smaller effect (0.08s) on a Kenyan literacy test in Swahili. We find no evidence that differential effects are explained by baseline differences in students or classrooms, or by implementation fidelity. We conclude that differences between countries can likely be attributed to differential effective exposure to the literacy treatment in the tested languages. Students in Kenya were tested in Swahili, which is not necessarily the primary language of instruction, despite official policy.

Keywords: education; literacy; teacher training; Kenya; Uganda; randomized controlled trial (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H52 I2 O15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 37 pages
Date: 2013
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-afr, nep-dev, nep-edu, nep-exp and nep-ure
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Published in Journal of Policy Analysis and Management

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Related works:
Journal Article: IMPROVING EARLY‐GRADE LITERACY IN EAST AFRICA: EXPERIMENTAL EVIDENCE FROM KENYA AND UGANDA (2014)
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