International Journal of Educational Development 59 (2018) 110–127

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International Journal of Educational Development

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ijedudev

Examining the secondary effects of mother-tongue literacy instruction in T

Kenya: Impacts on student learning in English, Kiswahili, and mathematics
⁎
Benjamin Pipera, , Stephanie Simmons Zuilkowskib, Dunston Kwayumbac, Arbogast Oyangac
a
RTI International, Africa Regional Office, 5th Floor, The Westwood, Vale Close, off Ring Road Parklands, PO Box 1181 Village Market, 00621, Nairobi, Kenya
b
Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies, and Learning Systems Institute, Florida State University, University Center C4600, Tallahassee, FL 32306-
2540, United States
c
RTI International, Africa Regional Office, 6th Floor, The Westwood, Vale Close, off Ring Road Parklands, PO Box 1181 Village Market 00621, Nairobi, Kenya

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: Limited rigorous evidence is available from sub-Saharan Africa regarding whether children who learn to read in
Literacy their mother tongue will have higher learning outcomes in other subjects. A randomised controlled trial of
Mother tongue mother-tongue literacy instruction, the Primary Math and Reading (PRIMR) Initiative, was implemented in
Local language Kenya from 2013 to 2014. We compared the impacts of the PRIMR mother-tongue treatment group in two
Mathematics
languages with those of another group that did not use mother tongue, but utilised the same instructional
Numeracy
components. Results showed that assignment to the mother-tongue group had no additional benefits for English
Randomised controlled trial
Language transfer or Kiswahili learning outcomes beyond the non-mother-tongue group, and that the mother-tongue group had
Learning outcomes somewhat lower mathematics outcomes. Classroom observational analysis showed that assignment to the mo-
Africa ther-tongue group had only small impacts on the usage of mother tongue in other subjects. Advocates for mo-
Kenya ther-tongue programmes must consider such results alongside local implementation resistance in programme
design.

1. Introduction government’s official policy mandates initial literacy instruction in a

Across the developing world, countries face challenges in improving
learning outcomes. Several of the targets for the new Sustainable
Development Goals focus on education quality, or more specifically,
literacy and numeracy (United Nations, 2015). Yet, there is little con-
sensus as to how countries can achieve these goals, given limited human
and financial resources.
The issue of language of instruction is central to the debate around
improving instructional quality and student achievement in multi-
lingual countries. Researchers conducting theory-based studies in the
United States and other developed countries have built a body of evi-
dence demonstrating that children learn to read most easily in their
mother tongue, and that skills they acquire while learning to read in
that language transfer to learning to read in other languages, at least to
some extent (Cummins, 1979; Melby-Lervåg and Lervåg, 2011). A small
but growing body of research from the Global South suggests that
mother-tongue literacy outcomes can be improved at medium scale
(Piper et al., 2016; Taylor and von Fintel, 2016). However, in sub-Sa-
haran Africa, there are disconnects among theory-based recommenda-
tions, policy, and practice (Clegg and Simpson, 2016). Even when a
mother tongue, as it does in Kenya, such mandates are often dis-
regarded at the local level (Piper and Miksic, 2011; Trudell and Piper,
2014). One of the main reasons that stakeholders resist the im-
plementation of mother-tongue instruction is their fear that it will
somehow harm students’ acquisition of English and other subjects seen
as more valuable and prestigious for students (Jones, 2012; Trudell,
2007).
This study, drawing on data from the Primary Mathematics and
Reading (PRIMR) Initiative in Kenya, aims to provide rigorous evidence
as to whether mother-tongue instruction has effects on student learning
beyond first-language literacy. Specifically, we examine the outcomes
of students participating in two versions of PRIMR – the base pro-
gramme and a version including mother-tongue literacy instruction –
on assessments of English, Kiswahili, and mathematics skills. Showing
that mother-tongue literacy instruction is helpful, or at least not
harmful, to student performance in other valued subjects may be the
crucial element in building support among stakeholders for broader
mother-tongue instruction, in alignment with current literacy acquisi-
tion research and theory.

⁎
Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: bpiper@rti.org (B. Piper), sziulkowski@lsi.fsu.edu (S.S. Zuilkowski), dkwayumba@tusome.rti.org (D. Kwayumba), aoyanga@tusome.rti.org (A. Oyanga).

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijedudev.2017.10.002
Received 10 April 2017; Received in revised form 10 July 2017; Accepted 2 October 2017
Available online 08 November 2017
0738-0593/ © 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/BY/4.0/).
B. Piper et al.
2. Background and context
2.1. Theoretical benefits of mother-tongue instruction
In previous published work that was based on PRIMR data, we
showed that mother-tongue literacy instruction can be effective, even in
settings where community support for mother-tongue instruction is
weak (Piper et al., 2016d).
A critical aspect to building support from community members – as
opposed to researchers or policy makers – for mother tongue is showing
that this instruction will not result in poorer outcomes in other critical
subjects seen as central to student success. One study using national
data from more than 9000 South African schools, including some that
had changed their early grade language policies between 2007 and
2011, found that children who were taught in their mother tongue in
the first three grades of primary school did better on an English exam in
grades 4, 5 and 6 than children who were taught in English in the early
grades (Taylor and von Fintel, 2016). However, very little causal evi-
dence is available from sub‐Saharan Africa that helps to make this case,
as few programmes have experimentally tested this approach at scale
and against a high-quality, non-mother-tongue alternative intervention.
There are two ways in which mother-tongue instruction could be
helpful in learning other subjects. First, mother tongue could be used
directly for teaching mathematics or science, for example. Using a fa-
miliar grammatical structure and vocabulary likely would enhance
student understanding of new material. Incorporating mother-tongue
instruction into courses often taught in a second or third language could
be particularly useful where students’ knowledge of the language of
instruction is very low (Clegg and Simpson, 2016). Second, skills
learned in mother-tongue literacy classes may indirectly lead to im-
proved outcomes in English and other language courses through the
transfer of specific literacy skills across languages. For example, once
students learn that letters have associated sounds in the mother tongue,
they can apply the same principle when learning additional languages.
Cummins’s interdependence hypothesis (1979, 2001) argues that the
‘common underlying proficiency’ developed while learning to read in
one language is beneficial in the learning of subsequent languages
(Cummins, 2007, 232).
A great deal of research has been conducted on the transfer of lit-
eracy skills from one language to another among multilingual children,
largely in the United States, Canada and other developed countries
(August and Shanahan, 2006; Ball, 2010). Studies have found correla-
tions between English and Spanish phonological awareness skills in
kindergarten (Atwill et al., 2007; Atwill et al., 2010) and preschool
(Dickinson et al., 2004) in the United States, as well as between French
and English phonological awareness among kindergarten-aged children
in Quebec (Chiang and Rvachew, 2007). There is evidence of skill
transfer across different types of languages and alphabets – English and
Chinese (Ke and Xiao, 2015; Shum et al., 2016; Siu and Ho, 2015;
Yeung and Chan, 2013), and English and Korean (Wang et al., 2009),
for example. In a meta-analysis of 47 studies, Melby-Lervåg and Lervåg
(2011) found a correlation between decoding skills in children’s first
and second languages (r = 0.54, 95% confidence interval [0.41, 0.65])
as well as a correlation between phonological awareness in the first oral
language (L1) and decoding skills in the second language (L2)
(r = 0.44, 95% confidence interval [0.27, 0.59]).
In a study with relevance to the Kenyan context, De Sousa et al.
(2010) examined language skill transfer among 60 South African
second graders, including 30 native Zulu-speaking children who were
learning English. The latter group were not literate in Zulu. However,
several aspects of phonological awareness, including rime detection,
letter sound awareness, and syllable segmentation were correlated with
English spelling, using both real words and non-words. In another study
of 60 third graders in South Africa, De Sousa et al. (2011) found a
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International Journal of Educational Development 59 (2018) 110–127
relationship between spelling in English and Afrikaans, using a test of
words and non-words. Other work from outside the developed world
has drawn attention to the additional complexity of language transfer
issues in multilingual environments. For example, Mishra and
Stainthorp (2007), in a study of phonological awareness and word
reading in India, noted that these relationships may differ when the first
language a student learns to read is not the same as the first oral lan-
guage. In the complex linguistic environments of Kenya and other sub-
Saharan African countries, such situations are common.
Some researchers have critiqued correlational studies which purport
to demonstrate transfer, as most do not explain the directionality of any
observed effect and cannot discount the possibility of an alternative
common cause (Goodrich et al., 2013). In an experimental study,
Goodrich et al. (2013) found that phonological awareness was corre-
lated across languages. However, when they examined the relationship
between initial skills and growth over the course of the intervention,
the authors found only moderate support for cross-language skill
transfer. In contrast, in a three-year longitudinal study of native In-
uktitut-speaking children learning in English or French in Canada,
Usborne et al. (2009) found further evidence for transfer, as well as for
the directionality of that transfer from the mother tongue to the second
language. Similarly, in Malawi, Shin et al. (2015) found that over the
course of a year, the English reading and writing scores of students in
grades 2 and 3 were predicted by their Chichewa literacy skills.
The Kenyan setting has recently produced relatively surprising
findings related to the interactions between mother tongue and English
language outcomes. Learning outcomes in English and a Nilotic lan-
guage in Kenya were higher than outcomes in English and a Nilotic
language just over the border in Uganda, although the Kenyan system
did not follow the mother-tongue policy, while the Ugandan system did
(Piper and Miksic, 2011). Longitudinal bilingual research from Kenya
has shown that the directionality of the language transfer in Kenya is
not in line with the assumptions of this previous research (Kim and
Piper, 2017). Instead of the expected Kiswahili-to-English language
transfer, this research suggests that in the language-complex Kenyan
environment, some skills actually transfer from English to Kiswahili in
grade 1. Therefore, the hypotheses made by proponents of mother-
tongue literacy instruction may not hold in the Kenyan setting.
There are few studies from developing countries that examine the
impact of numeracy programmes in early primary school (Piper et al.,
2016a), and even fewer that examine the impact of a mother-tongue
programme on learning outcomes in mathematics. A notable exception
in Cambodia (Lee et al., 2015) examined the effects of a bilingual
programme on learning outcomes in Khmer (the second language) and
on mathematics on a set of bilingual schools compared with other
schools that taught only in Khmer. Early Grade Reading Assessment
(EGRA) results showed no statistically significant impacts on literacy in
Khmer, but other assessments revealed impacts on learning in mathe-
matics. The study did not indicate whether the treatment groups used
random selection and random assignment, and the treatment group was
in a relatively small number of 50 schools, yet this is the strongest
evidence available in the published literature that a bilingual or mo-
ther-tongue programme can have an impact on other subjects.
2.2. Practical challenges of implementing mother-tongue literacy instruction
Although the research discussed above clearly shows a link between
literacy skills in mother tongue and in subsequent languages, there
remains significant resistance to mother-tongue literacy instruction in
practice in much of sub-Saharan Africa. Transfer theory is often not well
understood by parents and teachers, and their preference remains im-
mersion in the language of broader communication (Bunyi, 2005). The
continued focus on former colonial languages in the region – English,
French and Portuguese – as the languages of examinations and higher
B. Piper et al.
education leads to single-minded focus on those languages from the
beginning of formal schooling (Heugh et al., 2007; Negede 2000).
Ngwaru and Opoku-Amankwa (2010) gave the example of a boy in
Ghana who, despite being fluent in three Ghanaian languages, was
punished by his teacher for poor performance in English and considered
‘a weak pupil’ (298).
Even if local will to implement a mother-tongue literacy policy were
present, significant barriers to implementation exist. First and foremost,
teacher deployment policies often do not take into consideration whe-
ther a teacher can speak the mother tongue of the catchment area to
which he or she is assigned (Naom and Sarah, 2014; Nyaga and
Anthonissen, 2012). Additionally, there is a lack of training on how to
teach children in mother tongues, even if the teacher is capable of
speaking those languages (Begi, 2014; Iyamu and Ogiegbaen, 2007;
Jones and Barkhuizen, 2011; Kamwendo, 2008; Mackenzie and Walker,
2013; Obiero, 2010). Finally, high-quality texts and instructional ma-
terials in Kenyan mother tongues are sparsely available (Begi, 2014;
Gacheche, 2010; Iyamu and Ogiegbaen, 2007; Jones and Barkhuizen,
2011; Kamwendo, 2008; Mackenzie and Walker, 2013; Muthwii, 2004;
Nyaga and Anthonissen, 2012). In sum, the instructional environment
in Kenya is not practically supportive of the official language policy,
though the policy on language of instruction is quite specific.
2.3. Impact of mother-tongue instruction programmes on mathematics: The
Kenyan context
More than 67 languages are spoken in Kenya (Lewis et al., 2015),
and many Kenyans speak at least three languages: a mother tongue,
Kiswahili as the language of broader communication and a national
language, and English. The Kenyan government’s language of instruc-
tion policy is that children should be taught in the ‘language of the
catchment area’ through grade 3 (Kenya Institute of Education 1992;
Ministry of Education, Science and Technology, 20141; Republic of
Kenya, 2012). While the implementation of such a policy does not
guarantee that a child will learn in his or her mother tongue, particu-
larly in multilingual urban areas, it vastly increases the likelihood that
will be the case. However, the mother-tongue policy is widely ignored
in Kenya (Piper and Miksic, 2011), with curricular time that is supposed
to be allocated for mother-tongue literacy instead reallocated to English
or Kiswahili (Piper et al., 2016b). In some schools, speaking mother
tongue is explicitly prohibited and leads to punishment (Spernes, 2012;
Wangia et al., 2014).
Despite having nearly universal primary school attendance, Kenya’s
literacy and numeracy outcomes are lower than expected. In the
baseline study for the PRIMR Initiative, which surveyed 4385 students
in government and non-formal schools, approximately 40% of children
in grades 1 and 2 could not read a single word in Kiswahili or English
(Piper and Mugenda, 2012). Comparing student oral reading fluency to
the government ‘fluent’ benchmarks of 65 words per minute in English
and 45 in Kiswahili,2 only 5% of second graders were fluent readers in
Kiswahili and 7% in English in 2012. These results align with the
findings of other surveys in Kenya (Uwezo, 2015; Wasanga et al., 2010).
Fortunately, the most recent evidence shows very positive trends in
literacy outcomes in Kenya (Freudenberger and Davis, 2017). In the
area of numeracy, assessment results have shown children struggling
with both procedural and conceptual mathematics skills (Piper et al.,
2016a).
The PRIMR Initiative (2011–2014), described in greater detail
below, was created in response to these poor literacy and numeracy
1
In 2016, the MoEST’s name changed to ‘Ministry of Education’, the nomenclature
used in the rest of this paper.
2
Oral reading fluency benchmarks at the ‘fluent’ level were 65 correct words per
minute (cwpm) for English and 45 cwpm for Kiswahili. ‘Emergent’ level benchmarks were
set by the Ministry at 30 cwpm for English and 17 cwpm for Kiswahili. This article focuses
on the ‘emergent’ benchmarks.
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International Journal of Educational Development 59 (2018) 110–127
outcomes. PRIMR was a partnership of the United States Agency for
International Development, the UK Department for International
Development (DFID), the Kenyan Ministry of Education and RTI
International. The programme was designed to implement and test a
structured early grades literacy and mathematics intervention, eval-
uated through a series of randomised controlled trials. The mother-
tongue arm of the study, funded by DFID in 2013–2014, aimed to
provide rigorous evidence regarding the real-world effects of teaching
children to read in their mother tongue on learning outcomes in other
subjects.
5. Research questions
The disconnect between the theory and practice in Kenya regarding
mother-tongue instruction, and the need for rigorous evidence on the
broader effects of mother-tongue instruction on other subjects, led us to
pose the following research questions:
• RQ1: Does mother-tongue literacy instruction have positive effects
on student learning in other core subjects, including English,
Kiswahili and mathematics?
• RQ2: Does assignment to the mother-tongue programme increase
the amount of time teachers use mother tongue in core subjects,
including English, Kiswahili and mathematics?
6. Research design
6.1. Base PRIMR and PRIMR + MT designs
Student participants in this study received one of two interventions:
the base PRIMR programme or the PRIMR plus mother tongue (PRIMR
+ MT) programme. Base PRIMR had four central activities:
(1) Teachers’ guides were provided in Kiswahili and English, including
structured lesson plans for English, Kiswahili and mathematics. The
guides, developed for the first and second grades, included one
lesson per day for the full school year. The Kiswahili and English
lessons focused on the explicit instruction of early reading skills,
such as letter sounds, blending, reading comprehension methods
and writing activities. The mathematics lesson plans provided tea-
chers with activities for each lesson and matched with the con-
sumable student workbook that PRIMR provided for mathematics.
(2) Student books in Kiswahili and English focused on the five com-
ponents of reading: phonological awareness, alphabetic principle,
vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension (National Institute for
Child Health and Human Development, 2000), as well as writing.
The mathematics books provided opportunities to practise both
procedural and conceptual mathematics skills. The books were fully
aligned with the teachers’ guides. PRIMR allocated the books to
schools at a ratio of one student per book, lower than the 3:1 ratio
observed at baseline (Piper and Mugenda, 2012). Additionally,
teachers received pocket charts and letter and numeral flashcards,
instructional materials used in the literacy and numeracy lessons.
(3) Teachers received 10 days of training for the three subjects, in-
cluding sessions on the research behind the design of PRIMR and
the use of the lesson plans. Refresher trainings were held at the end
of the following two school terms.3
(4) Instructional coaching was provided to participating early grade
teachers through the government’s Teachers’ Advisory Centre
(TAC) tutors. TAC tutors visited teachers regularly and provided
feedback on their implementation of the lessons. The TAC tutors
were trained for 15 days before the beginning of the intervention.
3
Kenya’s public school schedule follows the calendar year: Term 1, January–April;
Term 2, May–August; Term 3, August–November.
B. Piper et al.
The PRIMR + MT programme included the same four elements. In
addition, PRIMR + MT provided all literacy materials not only in
English and Kiswahili, but also in a local mother tongue (Kikamba or
Lubukusu). The books and materials for mathematics were the same as
those used in the base PRIMR programme – i.e. there were no mother-
tongue editions. PRIMR + MT teachers were given one extra day of
training at the beginning of the programme and an additional half day
at each of the refresher trainings, for a total of two additional days of
teacher training.
It is important to note that the random selection and assignment of
school zones to PRIMR or PRIMR + MT did not take into account the
language skills of teachers or TAC tutors, nor did the programme
measure those language skills. This was done intentionally, to better
approximate the potential real-world outcomes of such an approach, as
opposed to purely testing the programme in a controlled environment
without external validity to the language realities of these two Kenyan
counties. As a result, given Kenya’s multilingual nature and lack of
language-sensitive teacher deployment, some teachers and TAC tutors
assigned to PRIMR + MT were not speakers (native or otherwise) of the
mother tongue they were assigned to teach. The PRIMR programme did
not mandate the use of mother tongue in the teaching of other subjects
beyond literacy, including mathematics, although it was encouraged
during the one day of mother-tongue training in each term. As noted
above, no mother-tongue materials were provided for the other sub-
jects.
6.2. Site
PRIMR was conducted in seven counties across Kenya. The counties
selected by the Ministry of Education for the mother-tongue rando-
mised controlled trial, Bungoma and Machakos, were chosen because of
the predominance of mother tongues: 73% of the students in Bungoma
spoke Lubukusu at home, and 90% of those in Machakos spoke
Kikamba at home.
The two counties are both largely rural and agricultural, but
otherwise quite different. Machakos is approximately 60 km southeast
of Nairobi, and was Kenya’s first capital. The current capital’s spread
and ambitious plans to make Machakos County a hub of technology in
the region are bringing increased urbanisation to the county. Bungoma
is in western Kenya, and the border area is a key thoroughfare for
people and goods coming from Uganda. Bungoma has substantial lan-
guage diversity, but the counties eligible for assignment to PRIMR were
relatively homogenously Lubukusu speaking.
6.3. Sample
Within Bungoma and Machakos counties, four zones – comprising
82 schools – were assigned to the base PRIMR programme; and eight
zones – 166 schools – were assigned to PRIMR + MT. Both groups
began programme interventions in January 2014. At baseline and
endline, approximately 40% of the schools in each of the 12 zones were
randomly selected for assessment (Piper and Kwayumba, 2015). Within
each school, simple random sampling, stratified by gender, was used to
select 20 students in grade 1 and 20 students in grade 2. At baseline, the
samples consisted of 625 students in the base PRIMR group and 920
students in the PRIMR + MT group. At the endline assessment, the
sample included 900 students in the base PRIMR group and 900 in
PRIMR + MT. Selected students were tested in English, Kiswahili, and
mathematics, in addition to either Kikamba or Lubukusu, depending on
the county.4
4
For the results of the mother-tongue literacy assessments, see Piper et al. (2016d).
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International Journal of Educational Development 59 (2018) 110–127
6.4. Measures
The measures used in the analyses presented here are shown in
Table 1. These measures were developed as part of the EGRA and Early
Grade Mathematics Assessment (EGMA) tools adapted to the Kenyan
context as part of the PRIMR Initiative.
The assessments were conducted by an experienced team that had
been gathering EGRA and EGMA data in Kenya since 2007. All assessors
participated in a week-long training before the commencement of data
collection. At the end of training, their performance in scoring the as-
sessments was rated above 95% correct for the English, Kiswahili,
mathematics, and either Lubukusu or Kikamba instruments.
In addition to student assessment data, the PRIMR data collection
team undertook 110 mathematics classroom observations in October
2013, and 134 in October 2014, which are examined in detail below.
The team observed 335 reading lessons in 2013 and 533 in 2014, across
the four languages. These observations used a modified Stallings
snapshot instrument (see Piper and Miksic, 2011, for a full description
of the tool) which observed teacher and student behaviour at three-
minute intervals, as shown in Appendix A. Given that the classroom
observations were 31 min long on average, this resulted in over 11,400
snapshots of what teachers and students were doing, as well as what
materials were being used in the classrooms. Each observation snapshot
noted classroom activities as well as which language was being used:
English, Kiswahili, and either Kikamba or Lubukusu (Piper and Miksic,
2011).
6.5. Analytical approach
PRIMR was designed as a series of nested randomised controlled
trials, of which the base PRIMR and PRIMR + MT comparison was one
study. We compared outcome results in English, Kiswahili and mathe-
matics for the control group, the PRIMR treatment group, and the
PRIMR + MT treatment group at the October 2013 baseline assess-
ment. They appear in Table 2. Baseline assessment results for the base
PRIMR and PRIMR + MT outcomes also were presented previously in
Piper et al. (2016d) and showed modest differences in baseline out-
comes. The results summarised in Table 2 show that there were some
statistically significant differences between the PRIMR and PRIMR
+ MT treatment groups in these English, Kiswahili and numeracy
subcomponents at baseline.
Given the small differences in outcomes at the baseline assessment,
we used a difference-in-differences (DID) approach (Murnane and
Willett, 2011) to account for the differences between the PRIMR and
PRIMR + MT groups at baseline, similar to Piper et al. (2016d). To
examine student outcomes over time, we used Albano and Rodriguez’s
(2012) linear equating approach. This approach allowed us to estimate
the causal effects of PRIMR + MT in comparison to PRIMR on English,
Kiswahili and mathematics to answer our first research question.
The second research question focuses on the incorporation of the
mother tongue into classroom usage in the other core subjects. We used
the classroom observation data described above to analyse the per-
centages of time that the four languages – English, Kiswahili, and either
Lubukusu or Kikamba – were used by teachers and students in reading
and mathematics classrooms. Using the classroom observation data on
language usage, we compared the percentages of language use for each
subject and across the treatment and control groups.
7. Findings
7.1. RQ1: does mother-tongue literacy instruction have positive effects on
student learning in other core subjects, including English, Kiswahili and
mathematics?
To answer our first research question, we fit DID regression models
to estimate the effect of the PRIMR mother-tongue programme on
B. Piper et al. International Journal of Educational Development 59 (2018) 110–127

Table 1
Measure descriptions for English, Kiswahili and mathematics.

Instrument Subcomponent Description Timed/untimed Measure

English Letter fluency Letters read correctly per minute Timed (1 min) Correct letters per minute
Non-word fluency Nonsense words read correctly per minute Timed (1 min) Correct words per minute
Oral reading fluency Connected text words read correctly per minute Timed (1 min) Correct words per minute
Reading comprehension Percentage of comprehension questions correct Untimed Percentage correct
% at benchmark Percentage of pupils reaching the 30 correct words per minute (cwpm) Untimed Percentage reaching benchmark
emergent fluency benchmark

Kiswahili Letter fluency Letters read correctly per minute Timed (1 min) Correct letters per minute
Syllable fluency Syllables read correctly per minute Timed (1 min) Correct syllables per minute
Non-word fluency Nonsense words read correctly per minute Timed (1 min) Correct words per minute
Oral reading fluency Connected-text words read correctly per minute Timed (1 min) Correct words per minute
Reading comprehension Percentage of comprehension questions correct Untimed Percentage correct
Listening comprehension Percentage of oral listening comprehension questions correct Untimed Percentage correct
% at benchmark Percentage of pupils reaching the 17 cwpm emergent fluency benchmark Untimed Percentage reaching benchmark

Mathematics Number identification Numbers correctly identified Timed Correct numbers per minute
Quantity discrimination Determining which of two numbers is larger Untimed Percentage correct
Missing number Determining what is the missing number from a pattern Untimed Percentage correct
Word problems Correct word problems response Untimed Percentage correct
Addition fluency Addition problems answered correctly per minute Timed (1 min) Correct addition problems per
minute
Subtraction fluency Subtraction problems answered correctly per minute Timed (1 min) Correct subtraction problems per
minute

Table 2
Baseline comparisons between control, base PRIMR and PRIMR + MT programme on English, Kiswahili and mathematics (standard errors in parentheses).

Instrument Subcomponent Control PRIMR PRIMR + MT PRIMR vs. PRIMR + MT

Grade 1 Grade 2 Grade 1 Grade 2 Grade 1 Grade 2 Grade 1 Grade 2

English Letter fluency 8.5 11.9 9.7 17.1*** 4.6 8.9** *** ***
(0.6) (0.7) (0.7) (0.9) (0.4) (0.6)
Non-word fluency 4.5 12.1 3.8 10.6 2.9 9.4** ∼
(0.4) (0.7) (0.4) (0.6) (0.3) (0.6)
Oral reading fluency 4.3 17.0 2.4 12.6** 2.4 11.4***
(0.5) (1.2) (0.3) (0.9) (0.3) (0.9)
Reading comprehension 0.2 6.8 0.2 2.1*** 0.2 2.1***
(0.1) (0.7) (0.1) (0.3) (0.1) (0.4)
% at benchmark 0.0 5.5 0.2 2.2** 0.0 2.8*
(0.0) (1.0) (0.2) (0.7) (0.0) (0.8)

Kiswahili Letter fluency 7.5 13.2 8.9 17.2 4.8*** 11.7 *** ***
(0.6) (0.8) (0.7) (1.0) (0.4) (0.8)
Syllable fluency 9.9 21.4 8.1 21.2 7.2** 19.4
(0.7) (1.1) (0.7) (1.1) (0.6) (1.0)
Non-word fluency 3.4 10.4 2.7 8.4 2.3 11.0*
(0.4) (0.6) (0.3) (0.6) (0.3) (0.7)
Oral reading fluency 4.0 13.0 2.5 11.0* 2.5** 10.0**
(0.4) (0.7) (0.3) (0.7) (0.0) (0.7)
Reading comprehension 3.3 14.1 2.9 11.6 2.7 11.8
(0.5) (1.0) (0.0) (0.9) (0.4) (0.6)
Listening comprehension 29.2 43.0 23.7** 34.7*** 27.0 38.8* * *
(1.1) (1.2) (0.0) (1.2) (1.1) (1.3)
% at benchmark 0.4 4.9 0.0 2.4* 0.2 2.6∼
(0.3) (1.0) (0.0) (0.7) (0.1) (0.7)

Mathematics Number identification 9.6 17.8 9.0 17.2 8.1 16.0 * *

(0.3) (0.5) (0.3) (0.4) (0.3) (0.3)
Quantity discrimination 25.6 54.7 28.3 51.6 25.6 50.5* ∼
(1.1) (1.4) (1.3) (1.3) (1.1) (0.0)
Missing number 18.4 32.7 17.3 31.2 15.8** 28.9** ∼ *
(0.6) (0.9) (0.5) (0.8) (0.6) (0.0)
Word problems 23.2 36.8 22.3 37.2 21.6 34.5
(1.1) (1.2) (1.0) (1.2) (0.8) (0.0)
Addition fluency 4.8 8.5 4.3* 8.3 4.6 8.6
(0.2) (0.2) (0.2) (0.2) (0.2) (0.2)
Subtraction fluency 2.9 5.7 2.7 5.7 2.6 5.7
(0.1) (0.2) (0.1) (0.2) (0.1) (0.2)

∼p < 0.10; *p < 0.05; **p < 0.01; ***p < 0.001.

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Table 3
Difference-in-differences effects of PRIMR mother-tongue programme on student outcomes, compared with the base PRIMR programme (standard errors in parentheses) and Cohen’s d
effect sizes.

Instrument Subcomponent Overall Grade 1 Grade 2

DID effect Effect size DID effect Effect size DID effect Effect size

English Letter fluency 0.3 0.02 −0.3 −0.02 −0.0 0.00

(2.6) (2.7) (3.3)
Non-word fluency 1.6 0.16 −0.4 −0.05 3.8 0.32
(1.8) (1.4) (2.5)
Oral reading fluency 1.8 0.11 0.0 0.00 4.1 0.21
(2.6) (1.8) (4.0)
Reading comprehension 1.8 0.14 −0.5 −0.06 4.6 0.29
(2.0) (1.7) (2.9)
% at benchmark 2.6 0.09 −0.9 −0.05 7.1 0.20
(4.4) (3.3) (6.9)

Kiswahili Letter fluency −0.7 −0.05 0.7 0.06 −1.9 −0.11

(2.8) (2.7) (3.6)
Syllable fluency −0.0 0.00 −1.6 −0.12 2.2 0.11
(3.1) (2.7) (4.4)
Non-word fluency 0.9 0.10 −0.6 −0.10 2.8 0.26
(1.5) (1.1) (2.3)
Oral reading fluency 0.9 0.08 −0.2 −0.03 2.5 0.18
(1.9) (1.4) (2.8)
Reading comprehension 2.9 0.18 0.5 0.05 5.8 0.30
(2.4) (1.8) (3.7)
Listening comprehension −7.2 −0.31 −11.5* −0.55 −2.1 −0.09
(4.8) (5.0) (5.4)
% at benchmark −0.6 −0.02 −5.9 −0.24 5.9 0.15
(5.2) (4.3) (7.8)

Mathematics Number identification −1.5 −0.21 −2.3∼ −0.42 −0.4 −0.06

(1.3) (1.2) (1.7)
Quantity discrimination −4.1 −0.17 −4.1 −0.20 −3.2 −0.13
(6.5) (6.8) (7.2)
Missing number −4.1∼ −0.26 −2.2 −0.20 −5.0 −0.30
(2.3) (2.7) (3.0)
Word problems −5.5 −0.26 −7.9 −0.43 −2.3 −0.10
(5.0) (5.5) (5.3)
Addition fluency −1.7** −0.43 −1.6* −0.48 −1.6* −0.42
(0.6) (0.7) (0.8)
Subtraction fluency −1.3* −0.38 −1.1∼ −0.40 −1.4* −0.40
(0.5) (0.6) (0.7)

∼p < 0.10; *p < 0.05; **p < 0.01; ***p < 0.001.

learning outcomes, with the non-mother-tongue PRIMR treatment

group as the comparison. Results presented here are the causal effect on
learning outcomes from assignment to the PRIMR + MT treatment
group, over and above any effect of PRIMR without mother tongue.
Table 3 presents our findings for the overall sample, and for the grade 1
and 2 subsamples, with the DID effect with standard errors in par-
entheses. We also present the Cohen’s d effect sizes for each of the es-
timates. We fit models on five English and seven Kiswahili outcome
measures. We found that the PRIMR + MT programme decreased lis-
tening comprehension skills in Kiswahili by 11.5 percentage points (p-
value < 0.05) – but in grade 1 only, with no effect for the overall
sample or for grade 2. There were no other statistically significant ef-
fects for English or Kiswahili for the overall sample, or for grade 1 or 2.
Our analyses showed that, for the six mathematics outcome measures,
Fig. 1. Mother-tongue use by subject and treatment group in 2014 classroom observa-
the PRIMR + MT programme decreased addition fluency by 1.7, 1.6 and
tions.
1.6 addition problems for the overall sample (p-value < 0.01), for grade 1
(p-value < 0.05), and for grade 2 (p-value < 0.05), respectively.
Subtraction fluency also showed statistically significant negative effects by 7.2. RQ2: does assignment to the mother-tongue programme increase the
1.3, 1.1 and 1.4 subtraction items per minute for the overall sample (p- amount of time teachers use mother tongue in core subjects, including
value < 0.05), grade 1 at the 0.10 level (p-value = 0.06), and grade 2 (p- English, Kiswahili and mathematics?
value < 0.05). The PRIMR + MT programme decreased outcomes in two
skills at the 0.10 level: missing number scores were lower by 4.1 percentage Using data from 776 classroom observations in English and
points for the overall sample (p-value = 0.08) and number identification Kiswahili subject classrooms, we were able to determine what language
scores were lower by 2.3 percentage points for grade 1 (p-value = 0.06). was being used at each of the snapshots for these classrooms. Recall that
None of the other measures showed statistically significant effects in the the data included the language spoken by the teacher, the language
PRIMR + MT programme. spoken by the student and the classrooms materials used. Fig. 1 presents

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B. Piper et al.
the findings. For the 2014 endline results, we found that mother-tongue
use was low, ranging between 1.1% and 6.9% of the snapshots during
which that language was spoken in English and Kiswahili classrooms.
There were modest differences by treatment groups. Control schools
used the mother tongue language 6.9% of the time in English class-
rooms and 1.1% of the time in Kiswahili classrooms. Mother-tongue
language use was 2.3% of the time in English and 1.5% in Kiswahili
classrooms in the base PRIMR treatment group, and very similar
amounts of mother tongue were used in the PRIMR + MT treatment
group, at 1.8% for English and 1.6% for Kiswahili.
In addition to the classroom language use, the PRIMR observational
data allowed us to investigate whether assignment to the PRIMR + MT
classroom increased the mathematics instructional time that used mo-
ther tongue, as measured using the classroom snapshot data. Fig. 2
presents the percentage of overall mathematics classroom time using
the three languages of interest (Kiswahili, English and either Lubukusu
or Kikamba) in the three treatment groups: control, PRIMR and PRIMR
+ MT. The results presented are from the October 2013 baseline and
October 2014 endline observations. We found that the percentage of
time using mother tongue in PRIMR + MT mathematics classrooms
increased by 11 percentage points (from 1% to 12%), while the per-
centage of time using mother tongue in base PRIMR classrooms in-
creased by 2 percentage points (from 0% to 2%). Interestingly, the use
of mother tongue in control schools increased by 10 percentage points
(from 5% to 15%), a change similar to that of the PRIMR + MT treat-
ment group. The largest change in both control and PRIMR + MT
schools was a reduction in the percentage of time using English, with a
16 percentage point reduction for control schools and a 15 percentage
point reduction in PRIMR + MT schools. There was no change for
PRIMR classrooms. Kiswahili language usage also slightly increased for
Fig. 3. Changes in mother-tongue usage between October 2013 and October 2014, by
treatment group.
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International Journal of Educational Development 59 (2018) 110–127
Fig. 2. Overall language usage in mathematics classrooms, by treat-
ment group.
the control and PRIMR + MT classrooms, by 6 percentage points and 4
percentage points, respectively, while PRIMR decreased the usage of
Kiswahili in mathematics classrooms by 2 percentage points.
The rich data from the PRIMR classroom observation study in
mathematics allowed us to investigate whether the changes in language
usage in PRIMR + MT were different for teachers, for students and for
the materials used in classrooms. Fig. 3 presents the percentage change
in the use of mother tongue between the baseline and endline classroom
observations for teachers, for students, and for the materials them-
selves.
Assignment to the PRIMR + MT group increased mother-tongue
usage by 10 percentage points for teachers, and 6 percentage points for
students; and it reduced mother-tongue material usage by 7 percentage
points. These figures were all slightly higher than in the PRIMR treat-
ment group, which had a smaller increase in mother-tongue use for
teachers (5 percentage points), a small decrease in mother-tongue use
for students (2 percentage points), and a 12 percentage point decrease
in mother-tongue materials use. Notably, the control and PRIMR + MT
groups increased their mother-tongue use somewhat more than the
PRIMR treatment group.
8. Discussion
The PRIMR research design allowed for a comparison of the causal
effects of the PRIMR + MT programme with the causal effects of a
combined literacy and numeracy improvement programme that did not
use mother-tongue instructional methods. Previous results from the
PRIMR + MT programme had shown that the programme improved
learning outcomes in mother tongue, in two different language com-
munities in Kenya (Piper et al., 2016d). There were statistically sig-
nificant results for letter sound knowledge, oral reading fluency,
reading comprehension and the percentage of children reading at the
Ministry’s ‘emergent’ benchmark levels, in both grades 1 and 2. These
results were robust to the inclusion of various control variables.
While PRIMR was one of the few medium- to large-scale pro-
grammes that tested the effectiveness of mother-tongue instructional
programmes in a rigorous way, that analysis did not determine whether
the PRIMR mother-tongue programme improved outcomes in other
subjects. The research questions we addressed above investigated
whether PRIMR + MT increased learning outcomes in the other sub-
jects, namely English, Kiswahili and mathematics.
For literacy, there was only one statistically significant effect of the
PRIMR + MT programme, and that was negative for the listening
comprehension task in Kiswahili in grade 1 (refer to Table 3). With 33
models tested at the 5% level, we would have expected at least one
regression model to show statistically significant effects for the inter-
vention, even if by chance. It might be that inclusion in the PRIMR
B. Piper et al.
+ MT programme made children less likely to understand Kiswahili in
grade 1, given the complexity of learning three languages within the
first year of formal schooling.
The key literacy finding that we identified was that there was no
additive effect of PRIMR + MT on learning outcomes in other subjects.
Unlike typical randomised controlled trials in the education sector, the
comparison that we were able to make in this study was not between
the mother-tongue programme and a control group alone, but also
between the PRIMR + MT programme and base PRIMR. If the non-
mother-tongue version of PRIMR was effective, as it was shown to be in
literacy (Piper et al., 2014), in mathematics (Piper et al., 2016a), using
a coaching model (Piper and Zuilkowski, 2015), and using information
and communication technology models to support improved learning
(Piper et al., 2016c), then the comparison between the PRIMR + MT
programme and the base PRIMR programme would determine whether
inclusion in mother-tongue programmes had additional benefits over
and above an effective literacy and numeracy programme which did not
utilise mother tongue languages, but languages of broader commu-
nication.
Our results showed that, for literacy, there was no additional benefit
for being in a mother-tongue programme in terms of the second and
third language outcomes. Note that PRIMR was designed to be a tran-
sitional bilingual programme, where children were introduced to
Kiswahili first, and then to English only after their introduction to
Kiswahili letters and content. The PRIMR + MT programme was not
organised to be transitional, as the Kiswahili and English programmes
were designed separately and there was no transitional planning be-
tween mother tongue and the other two languages.
The discussion above focused on the impact of PRIMR + MT on
literacy outcomes, but the more interesting findings were regarding the
numeracy results as compared with base PRIMR. We found negative
effects of PRIMR + MT for addition and subtraction fluency for the
overall sample, for grade 1 and for grade 2 (see Table 3). We also
identified small negative effects at the 0.10 level for overall results for
missing number and for grade 1 number identification. The negative
effects from PRIMR + MT were similar in magnitude to the positive
effects identified in base PRIMR (Piper et al., 2016a). In other words,
the PRIMR + MT programme had basically no effect on mathematics
learning outcomes compared with the larger study’s control group, and
inclusion in PRIMR + MT led to lower outcomes than random assign-
ment to the non-mother-tongue base PRIMR programme.
To understand why the PRIMR + MT programme did not improve
learning outcomes in mathematics, note that the training programme
for PRIMR + MT suggested that teachers should use more mother
tongue in teaching the subject areas. This approach had a small nega-
tive effect – compared with the PRIMR non-mother-tongue treatment
group – on mathematics outcomes. It might be that the use of local
language was new for teachers and increased the complexity of im-
plementing the new instructional reforms from PRIMR. This complexity
may have made the programme less likely to be implemented con-
sistently by the teachers.
In sum, the overall effect size analysis showed that there were al-
most no additional positive effects of PRIMR + MT on literacy com-
pared with the PRIMR programme. On the other hand, the mathematics
programme showed a modest negative impact for all three groups
(overall, grade 1 and grade 2). Therefore, the PRIMR + MT programme
did not have additional effects on literacy (English or Kiswahili) above
the PRIMR programme, and had negative effects on mathematics.
It is important to note that there is a dearth of instructional mate-
rials in mother tongues in Kenya. The Kenyan Ministry of Education
(MOE) produces a procurement guide, the ‘Orange Book’, that provides
school head teachers with a list of all of the approved books that can be
used for instruction in Kenya (MOE, 2014). The Orange Book does not
include any mathematics books in mother tongue, and this makes a
subject-based mother-tongue instructional programme nearly im-
possible unless teachers are skilled enough to translate content into the
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International Journal of Educational Development 59 (2018) 110–127
mother tongue themselves. The PRIMR training provided modest sup-
port to teachers in using mother tongue, but did not provide mathe-
matics materials in mother tongue to teachers. This study, therefore,
largely tested the indirect effects of mother-tongue instruction – the
ability of the PRIMR + MT programme’s support for increased mother-
tongue reading skills to impact learning outcomes in other subjects.
The analysis of language usage during classroom literacy lessons
showed a high percentage of use in the language of the subject, either
Kiswahili or English. It appears that the PRIMR + MT programme had
no impact on language usage in those subjects. For English, the control
schools had the largest amount of time using mother tongue (6.9%),
with not more than 2% of mother-tongue use in either English or
Kiswahili in the other treatment groups (see Fig. 3). Given these find-
ings, it appears that PRIMR + MT had negligible impact on the amount
of mother-tongue usage in English or Kiswahili classrooms.
The mathematics language usage analysis revealed that the mag-
nitude of mother-tongue usage in mathematics classrooms was low,
regardless of the treatment group. The PRIMR + MT programme in-
creased mother-tongue usage by 11 percentage points between the
baseline and endline assessments, with a commensurate 15 percentage
point reduction in English usage (see Fig. 2). These results are largely
similar to the changes in language usage in the control group. Even
when we reviewed the changes in language usage by teacher language,
student language and materials language, the PRIMR + MT programme
changed in ways that were very similar to the control group, although
there were more changes in usage in PRIMR + MT schools than in
PRIMR schools. In addition, we found that there was actually less usage
of mother-tongue mathematics materials in 2014 in all three treatment
groups than in 2013. Specifically, usage of mother-tongue mathematics
materials was 7 percentage points lower in 2014. These findings are
somewhat odd, and may have been influenced by the non-mother-
tongue mathematics materials provided by PRIMR. This last finding
reveals what appears to be the most critical element of implementing a
mother-tongue intervention programme that could be expected to have
an effect on learning outcomes. Without access to mother-tongue
learning materials, encouraging teachers to use mother tongue in
classrooms will have limited effects on language usage, even with
training and support on using mother tongue. It is worth noting that the
base PRIMR mathematics impacts were positive and larger than in the
PRIMR + MT and control groups, both of which had greater usage of
mother tongue than did the base PRIMR program.
9. Limitations
The analysis presented here suffers from a few important limita-
tions. First, the duration of the evaluation comparing the PRIMR + MT
and PRIMR treatment groups was only one year. The estimates com-
pared learning outcomes from the October 2013 assessment and the
October 2014 assessment. The intervention began in classrooms in
January 2014 in this subsample of the DFID PRIMR design. This meant
that the outcomes came from only the three terms of the 2014 academic
year. It might be that more time is required for the effects of a mother-
tongue programme on learning outcomes to manifest itself. On the
other hand, in the Kenya PRIMR studies, we saw statistically significant
effects after one year of intervention in many of the other comparisons
of interest (Piper et al., 2014) and the Tusome programme showed large
effects after only one year at a national level (Freudenberger and Davis,
2017).
Another important limitation is related to the causal explanation for
the effect of a mother-tongue intervention on additional subjects. Most
of the literature argues that being taught in a language that a child
understands will help that child improve learning outcomes in the other
subjects. While the PRIMR + MT programme encouraged using the
mother tongue for instruction, the individual teachers made the deci-
sion as to whether to use the mother tongue in the classroom. This study
is therefore not a perfect adaptation of the theoretical hypothesis.
B. Piper et al.
The comparison between PRIMR and PRIMR + MT was primarily
conceived of in this paper as measuring the effect of mother-tongue
instruction. One could argue, however, that PRIMR + MT required
teachers to do more: more preparation, more work and more literacy
activities. From this point of view, PRIMR + MT’s limited impact
would be logical given the additional requirements of that programme.
This is not a particularly convincing argument, however, since the
PRIMR + MT programme did not increase the expected number of
subjects or the utilisation of mother tongue compared with the control
group, as it followed government policy.
Our analysis revealed that very little mother tongue language was
used in mathematics. This suggests one practical challenge for im-
plementing large-scale mother-tongue programmes in developing
countries such as Kenya, where support for using the mother tongue
depends entirely on the teacher’s ability and interest in using mother
tongue. In Kenya, several rounds of analysis have shown that very little
mother tongue is being used in the non-language subjects (Trudell and
Piper, 2014), and that in the few locations where it is being used, it is
limited primarily to the mother-tongue subject (Piper and Miksic,
2011). If resistance to using mother tongue in the subject areas remains,
then the causal explanation for how mother-tongue interventions can
improve learning outcomes without increasing mother-tongue usage in
other subjects is invalidated.
This PRIMR study was relatively unique since the intervention was
implemented in four subjects – mother tongue, English, Kiswahili and
mathematics. However, several other subjects were not assessed. It
might be that additional effects of the mother-tongue intervention
could have been identified in science, social studies or religious edu-
cation, for instance. Comparing effects on these subjects would have
allowed for a comparison to the effects of PRIMR + MT on mathe-
matics, since the causal explanation of increased outcomes was dif-
ferent from what we found in the literacy research.
10. Conclusion
The research on using mother tongue to improve learning outcomes
in medium-scale or large-scale settings in sub-Saharan Africa is limited.
The PRIMR research design allowed for an evaluation of a medium-
scale intervention implemented in real-world settings, with government
officials responsible for training and support, and implemented from
2013 to 2014. The results of PRIMR’s impact evaluation showed that
the PRIMR + MT programme and the base PRIMR programme were
able to improve basic decoding skills in two different local languages.
However, the results also showed that the PRIMR + MT programme
had larger effects on oral reading fluency, reading comprehension and
the percentage of pupils reading at the Ministry ‘emergent’ benchmark
in mother tongue than did the PRIMR non-mother-tongue programme
(Piper et al., 2016d). This is encouraging evidence that a mother-tongue
programme can improve mother-tongue outcomes at medium scale,
working in real-world settings, such as Kenya’s Machakos and Bungoma
counties.
These results, while encouraging, are not able to address the core
concerns of countries and communities deciding whether to implement
mother-tongue instructional programmes rather than a non-mother-
tongue instructional programme. The key question is not whether the
child can learn mother tongue, but whether the outcomes in other
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International Journal of Educational Development 59 (2018) 110–127
subjects are likely to benefit from the mother-tongue intervention.
Several mother-tongue programmes in sub-Saharan Africa have met
significant resistance, in no small part because of the concerns of the
community about whether children’s inclusion in a mother-tongue in-
tervention would reduce their ability to learn in the subjects and lan-
guages that the community considered important. While language ex-
perts suggest that this resistance to mother-tongue instructional
programmes is due to a lack of understanding of how children transfer
language skills, there is limited rigorous evidence for policy makers to
reference that would allow for an estimate of the effect of the mother-
tongue programme on the subjects the community is interested in. As
we show above, where the studies occurred, they were often small scale
and were constrained to environments that were not reflective of the
complex language environment in sub-Saharan Africa.
The design of the PRIMR mother-tongue intervention allowed us to
exploit the assignment of zones to the PRIMR + MT intervention and
the base PRIMR intervention to determine whether the outcomes in the
non-mother-tongue subjects were improved by the PRIMR + MT in-
tervention. The results we have presented showed no differences be-
tween the literacy outcomes in English and Kiswahili, whether children
were exposed to the PRIMR + MT or the base PRIMR intervention. The
literature suggested that there would be language transfer benefits from
inclusion in the mother-tongue intervention (August and Shanahan,
2006; Ball, 2010), but no such benefits were identified in this study.
Instead, the results showed a surprisingly consistent negative effect of
the PRIMR + MT programme on addition and subtraction fluency
compared with the non-mother-tongue PRIMR programme. Explana-
tions for why these differences exist are complicated, but it might be
that more work would be required to help teachers teach in a language
that is not typically used for mathematics in Kenya. The results were
much more similar to those of the control group (which used a similar
amount of mother tongue as the PRIMR + MT intervention), suggesting
that using mother tongue to improve mathematics would be more dif-
ficult from a language point of view than an instructional point of view.
The results showed that the design of the PRIMR + MT intervention
made very few changes in the languages used in the subject areas be-
yond the mother-tongue classrooms, which is somewhat expected given
that the PRIMR + MT programme did not include local language
mathematics or other subject materials.
Results from the PRIMR + MT intervention provide a unique op-
portunity to estimate the effect of mother tongue on subject areas not
identified in the other research. This is an important area of continued
research, particularly in medium-scale studies that have a longer
duration than the PRIMR study, to determine whether latent effects on
other subject areas can be identified at time points beyond when the
PRIMR programme ended. Providing additional evidence as to whether
mother-tongue interventions can improve student performance in the
subject areas at medium scale and in real-world settings is an important
area for research for those who are mother-tongue advocates. Without
that evidence, parents and community members have a logical concern
about whether the benefits of mother tongue that have been identified
in Western settings or in ideal scenarios without the complexities of
language-complex environments are actualised. More research is
therefore needed to determine whether the concerns of parents and
communities, supported by this additional research in Kenya, show si-
milar results in other settings and over longer periods of time.
B. Piper et al. International Journal of Educational Development 59 (2018) 110–127

Appendix A. Classroom observation tools for literacy and mathematics

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Dr. Benjamin Piper is the Senior Director, Africa Education for RTI International based
in Nairobi. Dr. Piper provides technical support across sub-Saharan Africa and supervises
Tusome, the national literacy program of Kenya, funded by USAID and DFID; and the
Tayari early childhood development (ECD) programme, sponsored by the Children’s
Investment Fund Foundation (CIFF). Dr. Piper led the PRIMR Initiative, the National
Tablet Programme, and the PRIMR Rural Expansion Programme from 2011 to 2015.
PRIMR tested low-cost, scalable approaches to improving literacy and numeracy. His
research investigated the impact of Ethiopian in-service programs on teacher and student
outcomes. He worked with RTI, World Bank, DFID, UNICEF, and Save the Children.
Stephanie Simmons Zuilkowski is an assistant professor at Florida State University with
a joint appointment in the Learning Systems Institute and the Department of Educational
Leadership and Policy Studies in the College of Education. Dr. Zuilkowski's research fo-
cuses on improving the quality of basic education in sub-Saharan Africa, as well as on the
long-run relationships between health and educational outcomes. She has conducted
fieldwork in Kenya, Zambia, South Africa, Sierra Leone, Ethiopia, and Madagascar. She
holds a Doctor of Education from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, where she
also earned her master's degree in International Education Policy.
Dunston Kwayumba is the Senior Monitoring and Evaluation (M & E) Advisor for RTI
International, based in Nairobi, Kenya. Mr. Kwayumba supervises monitoring and eva-
luation activities on the Tusome Early Grade Reading Activity and the Tayari early
childhood development programme. He worked in a similar capacity for RTI on the
PRIMR Initiative and the PRIMR Rural Expansion Programme. Mr. Kwayumba is a doc-
toral candidate at the Catholic University of Eastern Africa in Educational Research and
Evaluation, and holds a Masters in Social Statistics with a concentration in Education, as
well as a Post-Graduate Diploma in Education from the University of Nairobi.
Arbogast Oyanga is the Senior Monitoring and Evaluation Officer for RTI International
on the Tusome Early Grade Reading Activity for Kenya. He provides M & E technical
support for the Tayari early childhood development programme. He worked as the
Monitoring and Evaluation Officer for the PRIMR Rural Expansion Programme, and has
conducted evaluation fieldwork in Ethiopia.