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Implementing a Large Scale ECD Program in a Decentralized Context: The Impact and Policy Environment of Kenya’s Tayari Program

Mon, March 26, 3:00 to 4:30pm, Hilton Reforma, Floor: 14th Floor, Suite 4 (Room 1401)

Group Submission Type: Panel Session

Proposal

Objectives
Understanding how national and decentralized government systems respond to quality improvement initiatives in the ECD space is an under-researched area of literature. This panel focuses on Kenya’s Tayari Program, an initiative of the Kenya’s Ministry of Education with technical assistance from RTI International. Tayari is doing a tracer study across three data points to create what we believe is the largest longitudinal study tracing children to measuring the impact within the context of a large-scale literacy and numeracy program. The objective of this panel is to scrutinise how Kenya’s policy environment responded to implementation of the large-scale ECD program. Further, it looks at the influence the program and research findings have had on implementation of the program by individual county governments, who are responsible for implementing ECD.

Structure of the panel
This panel will include four presentations: The first describes current policy reforms that have been taking place in Kenya in education, including devolution of the ECD subsector and the role of counties in education management; The second presentation outlines the place of ECD improvement in the new competency-based curriculum; The third presents findings from a longitudinal study to understand how school readiness factors change over time in treatment and control centers and in the context of these policies; The final presentation outlines changes effected by Tayari counties as a result of data collected during implementation and from the tracer study, as well as incorporating overall policy since the management and implementation of pre-primary education was devolved to county governments.

Main perspectives
Policy Environment: With the Kenyan constitution directing that ECD be devolved to county governments, implementation differs widely across counties. Tayari research has revealed that the majority of county level ECD expenditure has focused on teacher salaries and construction of new ECD centers, but that counties are able to change their spending priorities to improve ECD instructional quality.

Research informing practice: There is a dearth of robust quantitative or mixed methods research on medium or large-scale ECD interventions in developing countries. Understanding not only whether the small-scale pilot can improve children’s outcomes is important, but even more critical is understanding whether medium or large scale ECD programs working within government structures can change the behaviour of civil servants to improve school readiness in a meaningful way. Recommendations are provided for Tayari and other similar programs and countries considering quality improvement measures. The availability of the third round of longitudinal data allows the panelists to share how children’s skills interact and change over time, which is essential to understanding what initial interventions are most influential on learning outcomes and eventually primary school readiness.

Importance to CIES
This panel will provide research evidence on the interplay between policy and implementation in the devolved ECD sector in Kenya, which has seen encouraging efforts to improve the effectiveness of the sector (World Bank, 2016). The large scale of this program ensures that recommendations may be generalised in the Kenyan context and inform implementation of other ECD programs in the region.

Sub Unit

Chair

Individual Presentations