Scaling up successfully: Lessons from Kenya’s Tusome national literacy program

When considering why the impact of Tusome on learning outcomes over 1 year was somewhat larger than the gains experienced in the much smaller (but still substantial) pilot programs that preceded it (Piper et al. 2014, 2018), we note that the gains are both counterintuitive and outliers considering the literature on the typical impacts achieved when a reform moves from pilot to scale (e.g., Moore et al. 2017). We posit that the relatively successful implementation of the first two areas of the core functions model allowed the program to focus on particular aspects of institutional capacity relating to these areas. This focus appears to have ensured a high level of implementation fidelity in materials provision, teacher professional development, and even the more difficult task of instructional support. The fidelity of implementation, in turn, had an impact on the normative culture in the education sector and galvanized support around a limited, but important, set of behaviors for which key actors saw positive effects. These initial impacts, demonstrated by tangible evidence available at the local level, created a virtuous cycle that overcame the initial resistance by some in the sector and encouraged those who experienced changes in their classrooms, their schools, and their zones to focus more heavily on implementation fidelity in their locality. If this change process is what happened in Kenya in 2015 and 2016, potential remains for additional growth as Kenya attempts to more systematically address the third core function. Similarly, the focus on the utilization of the teachers’ guides in the initial stages of Tusome may eventually give way to a more open approach to instructional support, in which expert teachers can expand above and beyond what the basic model will provide, allowing, perhaps, for even greater impact on learning (Piper et al. 2018).

The findings of this analysis suggest that there is a place in educational research for both the medium-scale RCT initiatives that underpinned the initial design of Tusome and rapid and large-scale implementation and fidelity analyses, such as the one presented here. The special issue of the Journal of Educational Change cited here showed that in the field of international education, research interest is growing in understanding not only whether programs are working but also whether the theoretical perspectives that underpin scale-up and expansion efforts are borne out in reality. Recall from the discussion above that within the special issue, Elmore (2016) was pessimistic about the exercise of attempting national-scale interventions at all. Our findings suggest that Elmore’s pessimism may have been unfounded. When countries like Kenya make radical implementation decisions, invest in the resources needed to follow these decisions and policy steps with robust teacher support structures that focus on reforming the core of their instructional practice, there is hope for large-scale instructional reform after all. Research on implementation and fidelity is important not only for analyzing whether programs were ultimately successful but also for providing programs with rapid analysis of whether the conditions essential to successful large-scale implementation are present so that course corrections can be made.

It is unfortunate to tout the provision of foundational inputs, such as materials and basic teacher professional development, as a significant accomplishment of an education system, but that is the reality faced by teachers and students in many developing countries, including Kenya. Too often, and too consistently, books in the hands of children and training for their teachers are not adequately assured, and very seldom are teachers provided any meaningful or consistent instructional support. Teacher professional development—when it is delivered at all—is of low quality, too theoretical, or mistimed. Quantities of materials too often are insufficient to allow every child to hold and use their own book. Failure to provide these basic supports to schools substantially erodes the potential impact of innovations as they are taken to scale. The midline evaluation of Tusome showed that these basic supports were being provided to schools, teachers, and students at scale (Freudenberger and Davis 2017). The bigger challenge for the education system going forward is developing the capacity to ensure ongoing support of the type that enables teachers and students to make good day-to-day use of those basic inputs. On this count, the dramatic improvement in the frequency of school visits by CSOs is evidence that the Kenyan education system is also developing this capacity. Visits, even if they fell short of the desired rate, were more frequent, were focused on what was going on in classrooms, and included some feedback and advice to teachers. Whether those CSO visits add as much value to instruction as they could remains an open question. CSOs themselves are not expert instructional coaches and have only had some training intended to reorient them away from a default tendency to assume a supervisory/inspectorate stance in their relationships with teachers. The evolution of the system’s capacity to provide deep, rich support to classrooms remains a future challenge. Our current analysis of the development of system capacity to provide support to schools indicated that instructional change is not being driven by any substantial ongoing coaching technical input but is, rather, a first-order result of the changed norms around learning expectations and the provision of the basic inputs alluded to above. What the learning gains in a country such as Kenya could be if the more sophisticated elements of the third core function were in place remain to be seen.