One of the proposed policy options to address the issue of quality of education (i.e. to improve school performance) in Kenya, has been the scaling up of a “contract teacher intervention”, previously introduced by an NGO in Western Kenya, where it had shown to have raised test scores for primary students. In 2008, a team of PEP-supported researchers in Kenya set out to realize a highly rigorous experimental evaluation to assess the potential success (or effectiveness) of scaling up such an intervention. While the authors have managed to demonstrate that extrapolating results from an NGO program to national government policy is not a valid option, the results show indeed that no matter how carefully and rigorously an intervention may be designed, the end results and effectiveness in reaching targets will just as largely depend on the nature of the program implementer, and the related institutional context or constraints. Find out more through the following publications
