The Local Education Monitoring Approach: Exploring Government Ownership and Sustainability Success Factors in Northern Nigeria

• In Event: VIRTUAL HYBRID PANEL: Measuring what matters: Comparative perspectives on monitoring and assessment in education

Proposal

The Local Education Monitoring Approach: Exploring Government Ownership and Sustainability Success Factors in Northern Nigeria

Authors: Isaac Msukwa and Daniel Lavan, Education Development Center

This paper [or presentation] analyzes and discusses the key factors for sustaining regular local government monitoring of schools in Nigeria’s Sokoto and Bauchi states, using the Local Education Monitoring Approach (LEMA). The USAID-funded Northern Education Initiative Plus (NEI Plus), introduced the LEMA in Sokoto and Bauchi states in March 2018, based on the 2016 LEMA Toolkit developed by RTI International. The LEMA is a user-friendly, cost-effective and reliable way for state and local government school supervisors to collect school level data to inform decision-making. The approach uses a Lot Quality Assurance Sampling (LQAS) method, which allows for efficient, representative sampling of schools as well as easy tabulation of data, and quick interpretation of results through a classification system. In the context of NEI Plus, the LEMA is not a project monitoring system but rather a vehicle to strengthen the capacity of the State Universal Basic Education Boards (SUBEB) in regular school monitoring and in utilizing data for decision-making.

Early Grade Reading Assessments in both Bauchi and Sokoto States (2016 & 2018) have demonstrated poor early grade reading outcomes. Without reliable data, factors contributing to these poor reading outcomes could only be speculated upon. The SUBEB in each state lacked the capacity and necessary tools for collecting reliable school level data that would allow analysis of the causes of poor reading outcomes. While rigorous monitoring of schools in such contexts as Northern Nigeria has long been noted to present stubborn challenges related to human and financial resources as well as technical know-how, the LEMA is demonstrating its potential to be cost-effective and simple to both implement and analyze. The presentation will highlight key indicators of progress towards the appropriation and institutionalization of LEMA by Bauchi and Sokoto state basic education bureaus. These indicators include:

• State funding of LEMA implementation:
o Sokoto state fully funded the fourth post-pilot round of LEMA implementation.
o LEMA has been incorporated in annual state work plans, assuring that funding will be provided.
• State ownership of disseminating results: states coordinated the invitation of stakeholders and led presentation of the findings, including drafting action plans for addressing issues arising.
• Decision-making based on results: both Bauchi and Sokoto states have agreed on action points after disseminating LEMA results.
• State demand for digitization and associated training of EMIS officers.
• State procurement of needed digital hardware: Sokoto state procured 12 data collection tablets.
• State and local education officials’ assertions about the advantages and usefulness of LEMA.

The presentation will further examine and discuss the strategies employed by the NEI Plus project that appear to be key factors in the progress and promise of LEMA as suggested by the above indicators. These strategies were:

1. Through close work with state counterparts, demonstrate and explain the gap in school-level data, and its implications for making informed decisions that would improve learning outcomes.
2. Ensure state partners understand the LEMA implementation arrangements and technical know-how requirements. NEI Plus did this through intense and close collaboration with state partners during a pilot phase and four subsequent LEMA exercises.
3. Provide capacity building to school support officers (SSOs), LGEA officials, and state level officials on the three LEMA phases of implementation prior to fully transferring ownership to state partners. (The three phases include data collection, processing, and interpretation.)
4. Demonstrate (using government staff trained by the project) how efficiently results can be collected and analyzed through piloting a context-appropriate ICT-based data collection and reporting platform for the LEMA.
5. With partners, develop sustainability plans to ensure that school monitoring continues to be implemented beyond the life of the project.
6. Generalize findings to Local Government Education Areas (not to individual schools) to avoid viewing the LEMA exercise as a fault finding mission, in contrast to the traditional approach of monitoring schools.

NEI Plus documentation of these strategies, including implementation processes and findings from focus group discussions and key informant interviews with participants using LEMA, show that non-tokenistic involvement of state partners, from planning to the results dissemination phase, is key for ownership, while at the same time promoting accountability. State and LGEA staff report that they feel empowered with the necessary tools and skills to implement the LEMA activity, while management has seen (reported on) the usefulness of the data generated by the LEMA. It is worth noting that five other states not supported by the NEI Plus project have also expressed interest and requested support to implement the LEMA in their respective states. These are the states supported under the World Bank funded “Better Education Service Delivery for All (BESDA)”

Authors

• Isaac Adeshina Msukwa, Education Development Center

• Daniel Lavan, Education Development Center (EDC)