What happened
On 2 November, the Kenya Education Management Institute (KEMI) and the education programme EIDU signed a three-year partnership at KEMI’s offices in Nairobi, Africa Science News reported. KEMI is the state body that trains Kenya’s school leaders. Under the agreement, digital learning and assessment tools will become part of its national training for heads of institutions, deputy heads, education managers and Boards of Management.
KEMI will provide trainers, training facilities and access to its national network of school leaders, and will endorse or accredit the programmes developed, The Star reported. EIDU will provide technical support, curriculum-aligned digital content, access to its learning platforms and data systems, and training for KEMI’s facilitators. A joint steering committee led by the two chief executives will approve annual work plans and monitor progress. The agreement runs until November 2029, with a mid-term review after 18 months.
Why it matters
Kenya is in the middle of a major curriculum change. Competency-Based Education relies on continuous assessment of each learner, which asks a lot of teachers and the people who lead them, Capital FM reported via AllAfrica. The 2023 report of the Presidential Working Party on Education Reform called on the ministry and its partners to “prioritise the retooling of teachers in line with the new requirements of the CBC”, Africa Science News reported.
KEMI’s chief executive, Dr Maurice Odondo, was frank about the gap. “As we speak today, the foundational level of education in this country has not received full attention. Working together, we will be able to address that gap, so that learners move to upper primary and finally to senior school well grounded,” he said, according to The Star. In GGND’s view, the choice to start with head teachers is sensible: they decide how time, staff and devices are used, and a tool that the head understands is far more likely to be used well in class.
When the school leader is well prepared, all other issues fall properly in place.
Dr Maurice Odondo, chief executive of the Kenya Education Management Institute
The wider picture
EIDU’s programme already reaches about 790,000 learners in some 12,700 public schools across 32 counties, working with county governments and the Ministry of Education, The Star reported. It gives teachers structured lesson plans and gives children short, personalised practice sessions on low-cost devices, while collecting data on each child’s progress.
There is independent evidence behind it. A randomised controlled trial in Murang’a County, led by independent EdTech Hub researchers and published in Research Papers in Education in January 2026, involved 1,955 learners aged 4 to 6 across 291 schools over 13 months. It found an effect of 0.534 standard deviations on literacy and numeracy, and the programme worked for both boys and girls and across class sizes. The Star reported that this is equivalent to about six extra months of learning in a single school year.
EIDU’s managing director, Fredrick Seda, said the aim was to reach every kind of school. “KEMI reaches the leaders of every school in this country. By working alongside KEMI, we can help make sure those lessons reach the head teacher in a rural school as much as one in the city,” he said, according to The Star.
Could it work elsewhere?
Many countries have national institutes that train school leaders, and many are trying to use learner data to target teaching. In GGND’s view, Kenya’s approach of building data skills into an existing, accredited leadership programme, rather than running a separate tech project, is one other education systems could copy. It works best where there is already a curriculum-aligned tool in schools and government ownership of the training.
What remains unresolved
- Cost and scale. No budget, funding source or target number of school leaders to be trained has been published, so it is hard to judge how far the programme will reach.
- Evidence for older pupils. The trial covered pre-primary classes. Whether the same gains hold in upper primary and junior school is still to be shown.
- Devices and connectivity. Data-led teaching depends on devices that work, power and connectivity. Rural schools are often the least well equipped, which is exactly where the partners say they want to reach.
- Data and a private partner. EIDU is a private organisation working with public data on children. In GGND’s view, clear public rules on who owns and can use that data will be important as the programme grows.
What happens next
Each institution will name a focal person to coordinate day-to-day work, and the steering committee will set the first annual work plan, Africa Science News reported. The mid-term review is due about 18 months after signing, in mid-2028. “When we pull together and co-create, we will be able to transform this sector in a more meaningful way,” Dr Odondo said. The test will be whether that shows up in what children can read and count.
Sources
- Africa Science News Heads of Institutions, teachers to get digital and data skills under new KEMI–EIDU partnership (2 November 2026)
- The Star (Kenya) KEMI partners with EIDU to equip school heads, teachers with digital skills (5 November 2026)
- Capital FM via AllAfrica Kenya: School Heads to Receive Digital Learning and Assessment Training (5 November 2026)
- Research Papers in Education Digital personalised learning to improve literacy and numeracy outcomes: a randomised controlled trial in Kenyan pre-primary classrooms (January 2026)
Analysis and context are by The GGND Team. Where we draw our own conclusions, we say so. To report an error, contact us.
