- Communication specialist Kennedy Buhere argues that weak foundational reading skills have become a national education policy issue requiring urgent government intervention.
- The author argues that poor reading skills among learners have become one of Kenya’s most urgent education policy challenges.
- Six out of 10 Grade 4 learners cannot adequately comprehend a Grade 3-level English text, according to the Zizi Afrique Foundation and Usawa Agenda report.
- Policymakers are urged to prioritise foundational literacy to improve learning outcomes across the education system.
Last month, Professor of literary communication Egara Kabaji raised concerns that there were a growing number of learners in secondary schools who could not read fluently.
He raised the concerns in an article where he had a frank discussion with a Principal of Aligula Secondary School, Jessica Amboka, in Kakamega County about the challenge senior schools were facing: receiving learners who have not learned how to read fluently.
The discussion was published in The Standard on June 20, 2026, under the title Why many secondary school students struggle to read.
The unstated message between the two educationists was twofold: that students in secondary school shouldn’t have any problem reading and that it is the duty of primary schools to teach learners how to read. That is the maxim in schooling. It is the reason policymakers reserve the earliest years of schooling—grades one to three—to teach children how to read.
The Troubling Data on Reading Proficiency
In its 2nd Foundational Literacy and Numeracy Assessment Report 2026, Zizi Afrique Foundation and Usawa Agenda found that six out of 10 Grade 4 learners could not adequately comprehend a Grade 3-level English text.
The implications of this number are that out of the approximately 1 million learners in Grade 4, only 400,000 can adequately comprehend a Grade 3-level English text. The rest cannot. The number is troubling.
There is something to worry about the state of beginning teaching instruction in the earliest years of learning. Beginning reading is, in educational parlance, the solid foundation on which almost all subsequent learning takes place. All children, with very few exceptions, need this foundation to make optimal use of their learning.
Reading is a tool or a technology to enable students to learn. They cannot learn if they cannot read properly. Access to knowledge—vocabulary, sentence complexity, and subject matter—formally begins at Grade 4. When reading is properly fixed, reading to learn is flawless.
Education researchers, classroom teachers, neuropsychologists, cognitive psychologists, textbook writers, and policy makers see reading as the lodestar for quality education.
What Education Experts Say
Let a few of them speak to this important aspect of education:
“The early years set the stage for later learning. Without the ability to read, excellence in high school and beyond is unattainable.” — Richard C. Anderson, Elfrieda H. Hiebert, Judith Scott, and Ian A.G. Wilkinson in Becoming a Nation of Readers: The Report of the Commission on Reading.
“When pupils read fluently, their cognitive resources can be redirected from focusing on decoding and onto comprehending the text. For this reason, fluency is sometimes described as a bridge from word recognition to comprehension.” — Sarah Green, Assistant Headteacher and EEF Literacy Content Specialist.
“Reading is the means by which students engage with the academic curriculum and have the opportunity to succeed at school. When schools have early reading instruction nailed, they are also going a long way to addressing student wellbeing.” — Pamela Snow, Professor of Cognitive Psychology and Co-Director of the SOLAR Lab at La Trobe University, Australia.
“Students do not go to secondary school to learn to read, write and spell, and nor are secondary settings equipped to teach these foundational skills. They are called primary or elementary skills as a clue to where they should be taught.” — Experts in a 2023 open letter to Australian Federal Government Ministers of Education.
“Reading proficiency by the end of third grade is the most critical indicator of whether a child will graduate high school. Why is third grade such a critical point? In fourth grade, the curriculum shifts to more advanced topics. If a child is still learning to read, it makes reading to learn that much more difficult. If a child is reading proficiently by the end of third grade, they are four times more likely to graduate from high school than their classmate who struggles with reading.” — Children’s Institute, Campaign for Grade Level Reading, Oregon, USA.
“Reading with fluency is the gateway to almost all learning. Without reading, there is little science, no history, no geography. So, we should champion reading as a vital life skill; reading to learn; reading for advancement; reading to expand horizons; reading for pleasure.” — Amanda Spielman, former Chief Inspector, Ofsted.
“Reading is the foundation of all learning. From the earliest years of school to higher education, job training, and beyond, the ability to read with ease and understanding is the key that unlocks every subject – math, science, history, and the arts. Strong reading skills are also directly linked to higher graduation rates, workforce readiness, and lifelong success.” — Former President and Mrs. Bush, A Republic of Readers, Governors Forum on Reading, December 8, 2025.
“The harshest handicap we can impose on children in our public schools is to fail to teach them by third grade to read well. When we fail, the child fails. We create for her or him a cycle of continued failure, diminished self-esteem, lowered self-expectations, and decreased effort.” — Lynn Fielding, Nancy Kerr and Paul Rossier in The 90% Reading Goal.
“Reading is the gateway skill that makes all other learning possible, from complex word problems and the meaning of our history to scientific discovery and technological proficiency.” — President Barack Obama.
Reading as a Policy Priority
All these observations mean that reading is the cornerstone of education. Reading is the open sesame, the magic key to open the door to the limitless and multiple fields of knowledge—general knowledge, professional and technical knowledge.
The remarks demonstrate that reading is a policy issue that needs the utmost attention by policymakers. The reading problem is not by any means the only policy issue that the education sector faces, but it is foundational.
The Crucial Period in Education
In a chapter entitled “School Crisis” in his book Talking Straight, American author, engineer, and executive Lee Iacocca observed: “My feeling is that quality education depends more on how you introduce kids to the basics than how many days you keep them at it. To me, the ten-year span from kindergarten through the ninth grade is the crucial period in the educational cycle.”
Students in senior school are well past the ninth grade, which according to Iacocca “is the crucial period in the educational cycle.” In senior school, the students are expected to effortlessly interact with the vast storehouses of knowledge on English, Literature, History, Geography, Biology and other subjects.
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Reading is a policy issue that ought to engross players in the public policy architecture in this country. Addressing other equally pressing issues without this will not yield the desired educational outcomes expected from the huge investments the government is making—in finance, material and human resources—into education.
By Kennedy Buhere
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