Why Parents are celebrating in the slums of Kenya
When it comes to the education of disadvantaged children who live in very poor areas of Kenya, there are reasons to celebrate. For the last ten years hundreds of thousands of Kenyan children have been enjoying a remarkably high-quality primary education.
It all started nearly 11 years ago with three classrooms in a slum in Nairobi.
A small group of education entrepreneurs opened a community school to provide a quality education to low-income families. The school was a big hit with local parents, and it grew.
Parents were attracted to the higher quality teaching, that focused on real comprehension rather than rote learning. Plus, the supportive use of technology and lack of corporal punishment made Bridge a compelling offer to local families.
Fast forward to today and about three-quarters-of-a-million children have benefitted from this growing education network.
Kenyan government tests—under exam conditions—suggest that children attending these schools perform head and shoulders above their peers who remain in regular Kenyan government schools.
The Kenyan government tests all children at the end of primary school. If a child does well in the Kenyan Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE) then they usually go to a top secondary school. So it’s an exam that can seriously affect children’s lives.
Over the past five years, children who have attended Bridge schools in Kenya have done remarkably well on this exam. In every one of those five years, children at Bridge schools have out-performed their peers across Kenya.
There are a few reasons for this, including more time under instruction than their friends in others schools. Sadly, teacher absenteeism in Sub-Saharan Africa is very high.
One study showed it to be around 30% in Kenyan government schools. But at Bridge it’s only around 1%. Bridge has a strong focus on quality teaching and coaching teachers while they are in school.
2019 was the best year ever for Bridge pupils in Kenya. Pupils who have attended Bridge schools from Grade 4 or earlier (five or more years at Bridge) averaged 281 marks, 31 points above the average Kenyan pupil.
This is equivalent to roughly two additional years of schooling. It is as if Bridge pupils receive two more days of school every week. They don’t of course, but their test scores look like they do. It’s a great result because these pupils will be able to pursue a higher quality secondary education.
In my mind this is a big part of the value-add from a Bridge education. Bridge is not just offering better teaching, more resources, and efficient structures, although all those are praiseworthy.
I think the number one benefit of a Bridge education is that a child actually learns the content their government has stipulated, they have a real opportunity to pursue their dreams.
I say this on the basis of evidence from all the countries where we operate, which are all published for the benefit of the wider community. For example, a recent study on the government schools we support in Liberia shows that children in them are 7x more likely to be proficient readers than their peers in regular Liberian primary schools.
All children can learn, if only their schools would operate as if it were so.
Let’s take a moment to think about the norm in this part of the world. Sub-Saharan Africa is the centre of the world’s learning crisis. Because of the extreme odds against finding a school that will equip them to succeed, this is the worst part of the world for young people who want to learn.
“Schooling isn’t learning,” has become a cliché, yet remains true for far too many pupils. Bridge works for students because it supports their teachers with effective training, coaching and the appropriate learning materials.
This simply isn’t true for the typical school in Sub-Saharan Africa.
…teachers in sub-Saharan Africa perform poorly in several, likely complementary, dimensions. They teach too little, and they lack the necessary skills and knowledge to teach effectively when they do teach. If “adequate” teaching is characterised as being taught by teachers with at least basic pedagogical knowledge and minimum subject knowledge in language and mathematics for the full scheduled teaching day, then essentially no public primary schools in these countries offer adequate quality education.
Quote — Bold et al ‘Enrolment without Learning’ 2017
Together, we should be helping parents to identify what constitutes an effective education and helping them to find the options that best serve their children.
As I join with those parents in Kenya who are celebrating their children’s outstanding performance and the increased opportunities a high-quality education has afforded; I will also be hoping for and working toward schooling that produces learning for all children in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Dr. Steve Cantrell is Vice President for Measurement and Evaluation at Bridge International Academies. He is a former head of evaluation and research at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation where he co-directed the Measures of Effective Teaching (MET) project and led the foundation’s internal measurement, learning, and analytics.
He is a former Executive Director of the US Department of Education’s Regional Educational Laboratory — Midwest. He is a former Chief Research Scientist for the Los Angeles Unified School District. He is the co-author of Better Feedback for Better Teaching (Jossey-Bass, 2016).
Cantrell’s career began as a middle school teacher. He holds degrees from Brown University (AB, Economics) and University of Southern California (Ph.D., Public Administration).
