Enhancing public preschools and women’s socioeconomic advancement in rural Kenya

In rural Kenya, as in many other low-income environments, the lack of quality, afforable childcare restricts mothers from pursuing livelihood activities outside the home, which not only affects their well-being but can also result in underinvestment in children’s growth and learning. Furthermore, inadequate resourcing and a rote-learning curriculum across public preschool classrooms in Kenya hinder nourishing children’s full developmental potential during their formative years, which can have accruing negative effects. By extending preschool from 4-year-old children to 3-year-olds and introducing a locally-adapted, enhanced curriculum, this study takes an intentional two-generation approach in addressing the above intertwined problems. 

In collaboration with the County Government of Tharaka Nithi, Kenya, an interdisciplinary team including researchers from Yale University, Kenyatta University, University of West Indies and Bangor University have designed a tailored intervention to advance child learning and opportunities for women.

In the intervention, drawing on a compelling evidence base, existing and supplementary teachers are trained in effective instructional techniques, such as storytelling, play- and activity-based learning using interactive materials, and are further supported by a network of mentors throughout the school year. The project utilizes an experimental approach and includes 60 randomly selected treated and 58 control preschools spanning across Kenya's Tharaka Nithi County. Randomization ensures that prior to the intervention, children and parents in treated schools, on average, are comparable to those in control schools. With three different age cohorts in the study sample, the randomized research design thus enables credibly capturing both the one- and two-year effects of the intervention on 3-year-olds and 4-year-olds along with documenting the impacts on their parents.

The study team has also adapted and validated standardized child assessment tools - namely the Daberon, the International Development and Early Learning Assessment (IDELA), and the Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence (WPPSI) - to the Kenyan context to measure child development holistically. Furthermore, the project will evaluate the impacts on maternal labor supply, empowerment and overall household welfare through mother and father surveys that capture outcomes related to earnings, time use, mental health indicators, and intra-household decision-making, among others. All instruments have been rigorously piloted to ensure appropriateness to the context and to enable conducting a rigorous impact assessment.

Through direct partnership with the Tharaka Nithi County government, the team has designed an intervention with a viable path for continuation and scaling, contingent upon the rigorous research evaluation providing compelling evidence of a cost-effective model to achieve the desired outcomes.

We are currently working to raise resources to enable the evaluation of the long-term effects of the intervention. If you are interested in supporting this work, please contact Deanna Ford, Managing Director of Yale Inclusion Economics, at deanna.ford@yale.edu.

Principal Investigators:

• Costas Meghir (Yale University)
• Helen Baker-Hennighnam (Bangor University, The University of the West Indies)
• Teresa Mwoma (Kenyatta University)
• Dorothy Naivasha (Tharaka Nithi County Government)
• Simon Onywere (Kenyatta University)
• Samson Oteyo (Kenyatta University)

Research Partners:

• Kenyatta University
• The University of the West Indies
• Bangor University
• Kenya National Bureau of Statistics

Implementation Partner:

• Tharaka Nithi County Government

Data Collection Partner:

• Common Goal Research

This research has received support from:

• The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

• The J-PAL Learning for All Initiative

• The Whitney and Betty MacMillan Center for International & Area Studies at Yale University

• The Institution for Social and Policy Studies at Yale University