Kenya has made strong gains in getting children into school, but learning outcomes remain dangerously weak, raising fresh concerns about the country’s future workforce and long-term economic growth.
- •The Foundational Literacy and Numeracy Assessment (FLANA) 2025, shows that while 94.2% of children aged 4–17 are enrolled in school, learning progress, particularly in mathematics, has stalled or deteriorated, especially among older pupils and children in marginalised regions.
- •Three in ten Grade 6 learners cannot solve a Grade 3-level numeracy problem, while nearly half cannot both read and understand a simple Grade 3 English story and solve a basic maths question, benchmarks expected to be mastered several years earlier.
- •The report comes as Kenya grapples with the transition of the first CBE cohort into senior school, amid mounting concerns over funding, infrastructure and implementation capacity.
“These are not marginal gaps, they are foundational failures,” sys Emmanuel Manyasa, Executive Director of Usawa Agenda, warning that persistent weaknesses in early literacy and numeracy risk undermining the success of the competency-based education (CBE) transition and the country’s broader human capital ambitions.
At a national level, foundational literacy outcomes have improved modestly, but numeracy performance has stagnated, signalling structural weaknesses in how mathematics is taught and reinforced. Among Grade 4 learners, just 33.8% can solve a Grade 3 numeracy problem, while fewer than three in ten can both read for comprehension and handle basic maths. By Grade 6, 42.5% still cannot solve a Grade 3 numeracy task.
The findings come as Kenya pours billions of shillings into education reform and expands its competency-based curriculum, positioning education as a cornerstone of productivity and economic competitiveness. Weak early numeracy, the report warns, undermines later learning in science, technology and problem-solving skills critical to growth.
One of the report’s more striking findings is that pupil engagement during lessons has a stronger impact on learning outcomes than the amount of time teachers spend on task, pointing to classroom practices, not just staffing levels, as a decisive factor. Private schools, which generally perform better, also show higher engagement and better-resourced learning environments.
The Socioeconomic Divide
The assessment highlights stark regional and socioeconomic divides. All 10 counties with enrolment rates below the national average are in arid and semi-arid lands (ASALs), which also host most of the country’s out-of-school children. Children from poor households are more than five times more likely to have never enrolled in school than those from wealthier families, while nearly one in five children with disabilities remains out of school.
Learners in refugee community schools perform significantly worse than their peers in public and private institutions in both literacy and numeracy, while boys are now more likely to be out of school than girls, reversing long-standing gender patterns.
Capacity constraints persist despite expanded access. Public primary schools average a learner-to-teacher ratio of 42:1, rising to 44:1 in urban public schools. In rural public schools, there is one permanently employed teacher for every 45 learners, compared with 68 learners per teacher in urban public schools.
Leadership gaps are also evident. Although women make up nearly 58% of primary school teachers, they account for only a third of headteachers and 14% of Boards of Management chairs.
Despite near-universal access to electricity or solar power, fewer than a quarter of primary schools have operational computer labs, and less than half are connected to the internet, limiting the reach of digital learning initiatives.
Usawa Agenda conducted the assessment between June and July 2025 across all 47 counties, surveying more than 41,000 households, assessing nearly 50,000 children, including those out of school, and reviewing facilities in 1,527 primary schools.
