Tayari’s Longitudinal Evaluation Midline Results Evangeline Nderu 8th March 2017 Tayari, which means “Ready” in Kiswahili is a pilot pre-primary programme funded by Children’s Investment Fund Foundation (CIFF) and implemented by the national Ministry of Education in partnership with four county governments, and with RTI technical support. The programme works within the existing Education system and focuses on Numeracy, Language, Social and Life skills activities (lessons). We train subCounty ECD Coordinators who are county government employees and who are in charge of training teachers and overseeing their classroom suport. We conducted a longitudinal study beginning in January 2016, with a midline in October of the same year. The results of the midline are the focus of this presentation. Getting Children Ready to Learn

Tayari Counties Laikipia Uasin Gishu Siaya Nairobi Nairobi APBET The programme is implemented in four counties specified by the MOE because of their diversity in geography and population. Laikipia is vast, semiarid with lots of ranches and wildlife. There are also some agricultural pockets. The population is primarily made up of pastoralists. Uasin Gishu is verdant and the economy is primarily agricultural although there is a large urban centre as well. Siaya is on the shores of Lake Victoria. It is very rural and fishing and agriculture are the primary economic activities. Nairobi is a large metropolis and there is extreme wealth and extreme poverty to be found there. We work with public schools in all four counties and with the Alternative Providers of Basic Education and Training (APBET) schools in the slums of Nairobi.

Longitudinal Study of Treatment 2 Longitudinal study only compared those children in treatment 2 with those in the contol schools Tr 2: Materials dreveloped and distributed include teachers’ guides and learner workbooks for numearcy, language, social and life skills activity areas We followed approximately 3200 learners

A teacher using her language guide to prepare for her lesson Teachers in the Tayari program are encouraged to plan the next day’s lessons. It is paramount that teachers have a good lesson plan because it helps the teacher effectively use the teachers’ guide.

County Level Implementation A teacher (left) gets feedback from the coach after her class. Looking on is the RTI staff (centre) who guides the coach and gives him feedback as well.

Tayari School Readiness Items Subtask Domain 1. Backward digit span Executive function 2. Rhyme Literacy 3. Letter-name knowledge 4. Letter-sound knowledge 5. Initial sound identification 6. Listening comprehension 7. Shape naming Numeracy 8. Quantity discrimination 9. Measurement vocabulary 10. Oral addition Tayari School Readiness Tool: 10 categories with a possible score of 10 points each. The tool is adapted from MELQO.

Tablet Based Data Collection – School based readiness index The assessors were well trained and used tablets.

Classroom Observation Data Collection Classroom Observation tools were also on the tablets so data could be collected and uploaded quickly

Tayari Midterm Attrition County Baseline Midterm Percentage attrition Control Treat­ ment Total Laikipia 339 522 861 283 462 745 16.5 11.5 13.5 Nairobi 169 211 380 146 179 325 13.6 15.2 14.5 Nairobi APBET 334 232 566 262 202 464 21.6 12.9 18.0 Siaya 436 319 755 410 297 707 6.0 6.9 6.4 Uasin Gishu 371 324 695 346 304 650 6.7 6.2 6.5 1,649 1,608 3,257 1,447 1,444 2,891 12.2 10.2 11.2 The attrition rate is 11.2%, meaning we found 2,891 learners of the 3,257 we had interviewed in January.

Tayari Treatment 2 Gains The red line depicts the school readiness improvement between baseline and midline of learners from treatment 2 schools; the blue line is the school readiness scores of the control schools’ children. As we can see, the scores were much better for the treatment children

Gains in School Readiness To get a better sense of what is happening in our classrooms, we examined the data by class level. PP1 (mostly 4 year olds) and PP2 (mostly 5 year olds) classrooms were single grade/level classrooms. The Combined classrooms had a mix of children, some of whom werer much older or younger than the appropriate age for that class.

A large percent of pre-primary centres in Laikipia county are either located in conservancies or ranches. Communities find ways to ensure that learning happens, even in modest locations

Many Nairobi APBET centres have little to no physical space, but many centres find ways to create space for group work and activities, including responding to Tayari big book materials.

School Readiness Gains by County The table shows improvement on the school readiness index of children in control schools. The children in treatment schools in all counties had improved more in all counties as well as in APBET schools

Effect Sizes for Tayari The effect size of Tayari within the first year

Progress Towards Benchmarks Ideally, we want to see the majority of children scoring above 25%

Using songs, rhymes and picture books is an important way to help children in ECD develop their language and communication skills

Tayari Impact on Socio-Emotional

Tayari Impact on Executive Function

Tayari Impact on Language Skills

Tayari Impact on Numeracy Skills

Tayari’s training use practical activities and modeling to support the skills development in ECD coordinators who train teachers on numeracy and executive functioning skills.

Significant Predictors of School Readiness These predictors are associations we found in our data and they need more investigation to understand better

Implications Longitudinal study shows moderate gains after 1 year Tayari monitoring data shows moderate to high county officer implementation Tayari implementation is perceived to be successful Increased demand for Tayari in Kenya

Thank you enderu@rti.org