Improving access to affordable books at scale: Tusome’s experience in Kenya

• In Event: Innovations, successes, and lessons learned in the book supply chain

Proposal

Providing access to high quality learning materials is an essential element of effective literacy interventions. The USAID-funded Tusome Early Grade Reading Activity has been supporting the Kenyan government’s efforts to improve access through a variety of efforts. First, Tusome has worked with government organs including the Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development to produce high quality materials that respond to the best research on improving literacy outcomes. Second, the program has used low cost methods to print and distribute the materials at a national level utilizing the existing local supply chain. This supply chain successfully distributed more than 25 million books across the country. Third, the Kenyan government has used the experience of the national scale distribution processes to invest their own funds in this process and create significant savings not only for literacy books but also for other subjects and other grades. This presentation will present these three aspects of the Tusome intervention’s work with the Government of Kenya.

Tusome developed a process for materials development and distribution with the government leaders on these topics. The program was able to respond to the research on best practices in bilingual literacy development using controlled text and structured pedagogy materials while working with an entirely Kenyan local team to produce quality materials. This portion of the presentation will describe the scope and sequence development, materials and production process, and the work with the curriculum body to have Tusome materials developed, revised and ultimately approved within Kenyan curriculum standards.

Kenya has, for the last 20 years, invested significant resources to provide learning materials for children, increasing their capitation grant to more than $14 per child per year, nearly half of which was earmarked for instructional materials. However, access to those materials by actual children across the country has lagged, with average book ratios in lower primary education ranging from 3:1 to 6:1 depending on the grade and subject. Using a competitive procurement process, the Tusome program was able to print and distribute books for 3.4 million Grade 1-3 children at a 1:1 ratio. External evaluation results show that between 93% to 98% of schools had 1:1 ratios, even two years after initial book distribution due to the replenishment system.

The long-term ability of governments to cost-effectively provide learning materials to schools is key to the sustainability of programs and the long term outcomes of education systems. This presentation will describe the process by which the Kenyan government invested their own resources to print and distribute Grade 1 Tusome English and Kiswahili textbooks at a national level in 2019. This has resulted in a continued 1:1 book ratio and the MOE building experience with managing procurement processes that result in low prices and timely national distribution. Using these methods, the GoK was able reduce costs for other subjects and grades, thereby achieving 1:1 ratios for significantly less per child than they have in the past. This presentation will describe the policy and practical changes that resulted in these dramatic increases in low cost access to quality books.

Authors

• Brenda Anjuri, RTI International

• Benjamin Piper, RTI International

• Jessica Mejia, RTI International