The government has distributed 4.8 million textbooks to over 20,000 public primary schools under the Tusome Project.
The Principal Secretary for Education Dr Belio Kipsang said this during the Kenya Primary Education Development Project (PRIEDE) steering committee meeting at Jogoo House Friday.
The textbooks and set of supplementary reading materials aim at strengthening the teaching of literacy and numeracy skills to class one and two children in public primary schools respectively.
The chair of the Education Development Partners Consultative Group (EDPCG) Robert Powers Wick also attended the meeting.
Dr Kipsang said PRIEDE which aims to improve the teaching of mathematics in Class One and two compliments Tusiome project in laying a proper foundation for provision of quality and lifelong education to children in Kenya.
Dr Kipsang underscored the importance of literacy and numeracy in the early stages of children, saying that it provided children with the ability to cope with life.
Tusome Project is being implemented by Kenya’s Ministry of Education, Science and Technology and is funded by the United States Agency for International Development and the British Department for International Development at cost USD53.8 million.
PRIEDE project received a grant of US$ 88.4 million from the Global Partnership for Education (GPE) and is being implemented under the supervision of the World Bank to support Early Grade Mathematics (EGM) public primary school education sub-sector in Kenya at a cost of USD 88.4 million.
The grant, approved by the Global Partnership for Education (GPE) will benefit 6 million pupils in grade 1 and 2 who will benefit from improved early grade mathematics textbooks.
This funding will help Kenya to address key challenges in primary education as well to provide catalytic funding to help Kenya address areas not yet fully covered by other initiatives in basic education.
Mr Powers underscored the need to effectively implement the two programmes in ways that they complemented each other.