EAST house presents: Matthew Jukes - "Reading for All" in Kenya

The HALI (health and literacy intervention) project in Kenya is evaluating three strategies for improving educational achievement: (i) treating children sick with malaria (ii) training workshops and text-message support for teachers to promote explicit and systematic literacy instruction (iii) setting up ‘Buddy Reading’ groups for older children to conduct reading activities with groups of younger children. One hundred and one (101) government primary schools on the coast of Kenya were randomly selected to receive each of these three interventions. The design of the project allows us to evaluate the interaction between the health and literacy interventions and understand how being more healthy allows children to benefit from improved education quality. Developmental measures of literacy skills and systematic observations of teacher behavior give us a detailed picture of how and why children’s reading achievement improves over the course of the program. Here we report the results after one year of the intervention. The project highlights the different roles that randomized evaluations play in two fields of study: public health and international education. An understanding of this difference is critical for effective evidence-based policy making to achieve the goal of reading for all.