Evaluating strategies to improve children’s reading skills in Kenya. Study summary

Many students in Sub-Saharan Africa are not learning to read in their first years of school and literacy rates remain low in the region. Researchers partnered with the Kenyan Ministry of Education to evaluate the impact of two strategies aimed at improving the literacy skills of school children in Kenya: enhanced literacy instruction, through teacher training and text message support, and child-to-child reading groups. Results showed that the enhanced literacy instruction improved children’s reading skills in both Swahili and English and reduced the school dropout rate by 50 percent. The reading groups led to a small improvement in children’s attitudes about reading, but did not significantly improve their reading skills.