An Examination of Kenya’s Foundational Learning Evidence Base

By Christine Nzomo

The pursuit of enhancing foundational learning outcomes is among the most urgent challenges facing Kenya’s education system today. As schools nationwide aim to provide foundational learners with crucial literacy and numeracy competencies, a pivotal question continues to arise: How can we guarantee the effectiveness of our initiatives when the evidence base is inconsistent and lacking? An analysis of evidence in the foundational learning ecosystem in Kenya, conducted through the Unlocking Data Initiative, reveals critical evidence gaps (Unlocking Data, n.d.). The results of the evidence gap map highlight both the progress made and the significant effort still required to establish an education system based on robust, practical evidence.

The Intervention-Based Evidence Landscape

The evidence gap map unearthed several critical intervention areas that remain understudied, with limited or inconclusive evidence on their effectiveness. These include:

Remedial and accelerated learning programs, which aim to address learning gaps but lack robust empirical support regarding their long-term impact.
Behavioural interventions, often designed to improve student engagement and classroom dynamics, have insufficient evidence regarding their scalability and sustainability across diverse educational settings.
Technology-enabled learning, despite its growing popularity, lacks comprehensive research to validate its efficacy, particularly in low-resource environments where access and implementation challenges may hinder outcomes. The scarcity of rigorous studies in these areas highlights a pressing need for further investigation to ensure that such interventions are evidence-based, equitable, and capable of delivering meaningful results.
School feeding and health interventions, widely implemented to improve nutrition, attendance, and cognitive outcomes, have insufficient rigorous data on their long-term effectiveness at the foundational learning level.
The built environment (classroom design, sanitation, infrastructure), theorised to influence learning, has few studies providing conclusive evidence on its role in foundational learning outcomes in Kenya.
Social-emotional learning initiatives, fostering interpersonal skills, also show a lack of evidence in foundational learning.

Numerous empirical studies, such as (Carr 2006 ), (Dawson et al. 2013), and (Masriyah 2018), have demonstrated that assessments are a critical component of foundational teaching and learning, as they establish whether educational objectives are being met. Assessments are considered the backbone of teaching at the right level since they help education actors know where to start and ensure corrective measures are timely. In addition, assessments are an integral component of the educational processes, including teaching, assessment, and learning, as they influence transitions, progression, instructional requirements, curriculum design, and, in some instances, funding. Despite these benefits, crucial foundational learning assessment data in Kenya, such as the Kenya Early Years Assessment, remains inaccessible.

The Hidden Dimensions of Learning

The evidence gap map shows a distinct focus on literacy and numeracy, with notable evidence of strength in most intervention clusters. Although research in both is observed, there is a slightly higher number of studies centred on literacy across interventions, suggesting a greater priority on reading skills and language outcomes.

However, the available evidence supporting the effectiveness of interventions in other key outcomes referred to as ‘hidden dimensions of learning’ remains limited and weak. These areas include socio-emotional behaviour, equity and inclusion, system and policy-level changes, classroom engagement and participation, and enrollment, attendance, and retention outcomes. This suggests that further rigorous research is needed to establish stronger empirical foundations in these domains. Strengthening the evidence base in these areas is critical for informing policy and practice, ensuring that interventions are both effective and equitable.

Methodological Challenges and Opportunities

The quality of the existing evidence raises its own set of issues. The available evidence base is characterised by a heavy reliance on qualitative research methods (Arisa & Gachoki, 2025), which dominate the literature, followed by quantitative studies and, to a lesser extent, mixed-methods approaches. Notably absent are studies employing behavioural or cross-sectional methodologies, suggesting a critical gap in research that captures real-time behavioural data or broader population-level trends. Furthermore, rigorous experimental and quasi-experimental designs, which are essential for establishing causality, are seldom utilised, while longitudinal studies, which track outcomes over time, remain rare. This methodological imbalance raises concerns about the robustness of the evidence, as the scarcity of experimental and longitudinal research limits the ability to draw definitive conclusions about intervention effectiveness. Strengthening the use of diverse, high-quality methodologies will be crucial for generating more reliable and actionable insights in future studies.

Building a Stronger Evidence Ecosystem

Addressing these challenges requires action on multiple fronts:

Prioritise research in understudied areas: Critical interventions like remedial learning, EdTech, school feeding, and SEL lack sufficient rigorous evidence and require targeted research to assess their effectiveness.
Strengthen the methodological rigour and testing of contextual adaptations of results; Most studies rely on qualitative methods, highlighting the need for more experimental, longitudinal, and context-sensitive designs to generate stronger causal evidence.
Enhance policy uptake of strong evidence by scaling proven interventions: Proven approaches like teacher development and structured pedagogy should be scaled system-wide, guided by reliable data to ensure impact and avoid ineffective investments.
Foster collaboration & capacity building by:
1. Strengthening partnerships and co-creation initiatives between universities, CSOs, and the Ministry of Education and its departments.
2. Developing open-access repositories to enable access to evidence and train local researchers in evidence synthesis.

Which Way Forward?

The stakes for improving Kenya’s foundational learning outcomes are immensely high. With each passing year, millions of children move through an education system that may or may not be providing them with the skills they need for future success. The gaps in our knowledge represent more than academic concerns—they translate directly into lost potential and missed opportunities.

Addressing these evidence gaps requires sustained commitment from all stakeholders. Researchers must pursue questions that matter most to practitioners. Policymakers need to demand and utilise better evidence when making decisions. Donors should prioritise funding for studies that fill critical knowledge gaps rather than reinforcing existing research patterns.

By taking these steps, we can transform Kenya’s foundational learning landscape from one of uncertainty to one where every child benefits from interventions proven to work in their specific context. The journey will require patience and persistence, but the destination—an education system truly built on evidence—is well worth the effort.

As we move forward, let us remember that behind every data point are real children whose futures depend on the quality of decisions we make today. By strengthening the evidence base, we honour our collective responsibility to ensure those decisions are the best they can be.

You can explore Kenya’s interactive evidence gap map at the Unlocking Data Initiative Website