Modern data analytics using real-time data drawn from an Education Management Information System (EMIS)

• In Event: Program evaluation in diverse contexts

Proposal

With many countries still operating on paper-based school record systems, the accountability, reliability and transparency of education data is often lost. This limits data-informed decisions at the school level and makes data-driven, evidence-based policy creation and planning at the national level nearly impossible. In this regard, education authorities at all levels must understand how to apply data where and when it is needed to create strong systems of education data collection, analysis and reporting.

To strengthen the management and analysis of education data and to leverage technology to improve efficiencies and effectiveness, Community Systems Foundation (CSF) partnered with UNESCO on the global OpenEMIS Initiative. OpenEMIS is a generalized and open-sourced Educational Management Information System (EMIS) designed to provide data to strengthen management of the education sector. OpenEMIS is being implemented by Ministries of Education globally to support strengthened education and specifically the equitable learning achievement of all children through better planning and monitoring at all levels of the system. These goals align with national priorities and the Sustainable Development Goal 4 -- Quality Education.

A key success factor of the initiative is in the area of Data Analytics. This paper will highlight how CSF engages its data science team to assist education officials to produce, monitor and analyze Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). With the goal of strengthening national education priorities and development plans, OpenEMIS provides users with an easy-to-use, real-time education monitoring system that collects and manages data in preparation for analysis and autonomous management and dissemination of data.

From national implementation in over a dozen countries, CSF has identified two challenges that must be considered if education planners are to successfully use the toolkit.

The first challenge is securing high quality, comprehensive transactional data. Since many school records historically have been generated on paper or are non-existent, obtaining the needed data to produce specific indicators can be difficult. Often the time required to prepare data for production of indicators render the information irrelevant to the needs of education planners.

The second challenge is the lack of institutional and individual capacity for data analysis at all levels of the sector. While most countries have national statistical offices and data analysts on staff, those who have been trained to use an EMIS are relatively few. In many ways, data analytics requires a wide scope of background knowledge in statistics, databases and other data systems, visualizations and policy planning. Many in-country staff, however, may have only been trained on one, or several, of these categories.

To overcome these challenges and create sustainable solutions, CSF takes a multi-track approach. To overcome the first challenge, OpenEMIS Core, an online, flexible, customizable and real-time platform, is utilized to collect individual student-level data. Then additional OpenEMIS trainings are conducted that focus on the data lifecycle, from collection to management, production and analysis of relevant data. To further increase national capacity, CSF advised the Ministry on desired institutional structures to fulfill the requirements of modern data analytics. During this process, strengthening Ministries’ data analysis ability is done through capacity building workshops and data analyst trainings. Through these project activities, CSF ensures that government counterparts can implement OpenEMIS autonomously.

With data in hand, Ministry analysts can begin to visualise national progress against targets through the evaluation of KPIs on student attendance and behaviour, among many others factors. To ensure data quality and integrity, the initial process may take between one and two years to produce the relevant data needed to establish even a single indicator. As data continues to be entered into the system, KPIs can be revised and added. To account for shifting national priorities, KPIs are updated every year with the help of CSF technical staff and autonomously by ministry personnel, depending on how long OpenEMIS has been implemented in a country.

To develop KPIs and begin to visualize national education trends,OpenEMIS provides users with many data analytical tools. These include OpenEMIS Core, Integrator, DataManager and Dashboard. OpenEMIS Core enables the collection of student, staff and institution level data to help ministries track participation, inclusivity, infrastructure, resources and learning assessment. OpenEMIS Integrator is used to generate educational indicators using the Extract - Transform - Load (ETL) method and OpenEMIS DataManager helps with the defining and managing indicator data in the OpenEMIS DataWarehouse. After utilizing these data analytics tools, users can then use OpenEMIS Dashboard to design thematic dashboards, tables, graphs and maps without having to develop code. When combined, OpenEMIS allows for the timely production of indicators, visualizations and dashboards that can be updated and reused at any time.

The power of OpenEMIS is best demonstrated through data dashboards. An example of one of these dashboards is the Maldives Education Management Information System (MEMIS) Dashboard. Released publicly in mid-September, the MEMIS Dashboard serves as a central repository for education indicators. Data on education institutions, students, staff, data quality, assessment, absences, among many other indicators enables policy planners to make monitor progress of sectoral development, while strengthening transparency and accountability to the general public.

This paper will demonstrate the success of the OpenEMIS Initiative at country level, particularly in strengthening analysis of education-related KPIs and dissemination of education dashboard. OpenEMIS users have been able to strengthen their national education systems and make data-driven education decisions. With continued capacity building to better understand the data analysis process, having countries secure good quality of data, and by developing predictive models to exploit patterns in historical and transactional EMIS data, further risks and opportunities can be identified to course-correct and continue to improve the status of education worldwide.

Author

• Sunmin Lee, Community Systems Foundation