Abstract:

Carolina for Kibera (CFK), an international nonprofit based in Nairobi, Kenya works to develop local leaders, catalyze positive change, and alleviate poverty in the informal settlement of Kibera through key education, health and youth empowerment initiatives. In Kibera, thousands of students attend informal schools run by religious organizations, NGOs, and entrepreneurs. These schools are not without their problems; many have high school fees, their teachers are often untrained, school lunch programs can be inconsistent, among other challenges. Distributing scholarships is the universally used model to address issues of student success and school completion, but this strategy cannot possibly meet the financial needs of all students, nor is it cost effective; scholarships carry administrative costs as high as triple the cost of the scholarship itself to disburse and administer. CFK’s Best Schools Initiative (BSI) is a research initiative focused on providing alternatives to this traditional model of education development by instead targeting both financial and non-financial factors that impact student success.

Our two-year long research initiative produced 12 Best Practices which are research guided interventions developed through interviews with over 1,000 parents, 30 school Head Teachers and Directors, and 20 local education NGOs. BSI evaluates the extent to which these practices keep students in school so they can ultimately pass Kenya’s national primary exit exam. Our practices range from administrator and teacher training, adjusting school fees and supplementing teacher pay, to increasing the availability of textbooks and school lunch programs. To date, 36 schools have partnered to implement at least one of these practices, directly impacting over 21,500 students. By testing a variety of solutions through careful research, BSI identifies the most effective factors impacting student success and aims to reproduce and translate those practices beyond Kibera.

The primary impact metric of BSI, student attendance, is tracked by school with data pre and post implementation of a BSI practice through a proprietary mobile application. By implementing these practices in a variety of schools, our approach seeks to minimize the impact of school characteristics in measuring how our practices change student attendance. Our forthcoming results will highlight which best practices have the most significant change in student attendance. CFK’s goal is to expand the most effective practices to informal schools in Kibera and ultimately partner with global NGOs and governments to translate these practices to informal schools across Kenya.

Keywords:

Global Development, Informal Schools, Scholarships, Teacher Training, Feeding Programs, Attendance Rewards, Textbooks, Kenya, Africa.