AKA, M has been offering professional development programmes to English teachers and headteachers as part of its outreach activities since 2009. The Academy invited AKU-IED to develop AKA, M capacity in the area of monitoring and evaluation with a specific focus on outreach programmes. In response to this invitation, a small scale study was carried out to pilot teachers’ and students’ assessment tools developed as part of the capacity building workshop held in Mombasa, Kenya. The evaluation study aimed to examine the impact of AKA, M outreach programmes on students’ (grades 4 to 6) learning outcomes in English language in intervention areas of Mombasa. Three tools were administered to assess students’ cognitive (English Achievement Tests) and non-cognitive (English Language Attitude Scale, Student-Teacher Relationship Questionnaire) outcomes. A quasi-experiment was employed for the small-scale study to compare outreach (n=3) and non-outreach (n=3) classes. A sample of 367 students was recruited from the target classes. This paper focuses on pilot results of students’ learning outcomes.

In general, students’ assessment tools have demonstrated satisfactory psychometric properties. However, a few extremely difficult items can be reviewed before launching the main study. Results of group comparison have revealed that outreach classes have scored higher in achievement tests than their non-outreach counterparts in grade 4 and 6 with a significant difference in the latter (p0.05).

The study has begun the process of accumulating evidence that the outreach programme evaluated can serve as a model of teacher development within professional development activities of AKA, M. It also provides a modest foundation for a larger and more representative sample study to produce generalizable data.