E-primary school system for improving the quality, efficiency, and effectiveness of primary education in Bangladesh

• In Event: Shifting landscapes of digital societies

Abstract

e-Primary School System for
Improving the Quality, Efficiency, and Effectiveness of the Primary Education
ICT in Primary Education, Save the Children in Bangladesh
The Individual paper/poster presentation will on e-Primary School System specifically designed for the use by school administrators to plan and manage education systems in an efficient, effective and sustainable manner. Until recently, data management was primarily concerned with providing information on education inputs, such as the number of schools, enrolment levels and the number of teachers. However, as a result of the recent drive towards increased transparency, combined with the need to improve quality of education, information systems are increasingly required to produce more complex information about educational processes and outputs . Successful management of today’s education systems requires effective policy-making and system monitoring through data and information. Bangladesh has one of the largest primary education systems and it has become a necessity to create an innovative data management system for providing school administrators and decision makers with the information to understand how educational inputs are transformed into educational outputs. The situation analysis of the project stated that in the government primary schools (GPS) of Bangladesh, among the many other education related issues, the government faces the problem of losing track of students halfway through their education process. While every child being enrolled in a school is duly noted, the progress of this child and whether he/she actually ends up completing the necessary amount of schooling is not properly followed. As a result, records show many students disappearing halfway through the education process without a trace. To address these issues, Save the Children, in collaboration with the Directorate of Primary Education (DPE), created a software, the “Students’ Performance Management System (SPMS)” which allowed schools to follow the progress and development of individual student throughout the primary school cycle. Originally it was developed as an offline system. When the project staff shared the offline software with the DPE, they asked if an online version of the software could be developed and piloted, which would not only include a student module but also two additional modules for teachers and the schools infrastructure (hence addressing all the data entry fields of the monthly monitoring report each school has to send to the sub-district Education Office). Thus all three modules were introduced under the umbrella of e-Primary School System. The system hosted on the DPE website (www.dpe.gov.bd) and pilot tested in 116 other government primary schools in one sub-district where all schools have laptops, distributed by the parliament member elected from that particular area. The DPE provided the modems for Internet with monthly fees. Save the Children developed the software and provided technical supports for implementation while DPE made the operational management. The recent evaluation of the pilot program showed that in the pilot schools, the introduced e-primary system improved the management of the schools, and generated high frequency, reliable school level data that identified poor performing students, automated the human resource services to teachers, such as access to monthly pay slips and leave and attendance. The dashboards allowed data retrieved, analyzed and customized faster and more conveniently from very micro to macro level (general practice of the system aggregates data but does not provide coheredt picture of ground level). The project’s intervention has brought benefits to the primary education system, nonetheless certain challenges do exists in case of rolling out the system nationwide. Only a small percentage of government primary schools (GPS) of country have laptops in schools. Infrastructure issues including (irregular or no) electricity and (slow or non-existent) Internet affect schools and trouble shooting of the equipment in schools found problematic. However, it is seen that widespread access to mobile phones even among the poor, and trend of improving access to internet connectivity across Bangladesh have provided new opportunities to school systems, where computers with reliable internet connections are rare. According to Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC) website, there are over 98 million active mobile subscribers (64% penetration rate) in Bangladesh . Mobile technologies are constantly evolving globally and e-primary school system is accessible through devices from mobile phones and tablet computers.

Authors

• Ruxana Hossain Parvin, Save the Children in Bangladesh, Penn State, USA

• Shirin Lutfeali, Save the Children