Building an innovative and integrated data system to drive decision making and deliver quality, equitable education in Sierra Leone.

Group Submission Type: Formal Panel Session

Proposal

Sierra Leone has recently embarked on an ambitious series of education investment and reforms. From the Free Quality School Education programme that has removed fees across basic and senior secondary education, to the creation of a potentially transformative radical inclusion agenda and a significant increase in the quality assurance and supportive supervision capacity of the education system. These investments have resulted in record numbers of girls remaining in school and best ever exam results at secondary level. In recent West African Secondary School Examinations (WASSCE) there was a 354% rise in the number of candidates who sat the exams in 2021 compared with 2018 and more female pupils sat the exam than males – for the first time ever. Overall, there was a 979% increase in the number of pupils achieving the performance benchmark (five credits or more) compared with 2018.

Central to this transformation has been a belief that a better understanding of what the system looks like can lead to better decisions and higher performance. This is as true for structural challenges to the system as it is to day to day processes in schools and classrooms. Five years ago, the data that was available to provide this understand was of limited quantity, of low quality and scattered across different parts of government and it’s partners. In recent years, Sierra Leone with support from various partners has been improving the quantity, quality and integration of data enabling much greater insight and much more evidenced-based decision making.

This is not just at central Government levels, but also at local government and school level where innovations linking data and performance improvement have been helping to drive change in key areas. The EdTech Hub undertook research into the data availability and users across the system and this has been crucial in helping to identify existing limitations and opportunities for how data can be a greater part of education improvement at all levels.

This paper will explore the vision of the Government of Sierra Leone on the role of evidence in improving decision making for quality and equity in Sierra Leone and will focus on a few specific examples.

Despite major resource constraints, the Ministry of Basic and Senior Secondary Education has expanded and digitised the collection of education data. The Annual School Census provides a yearly snapshot on the state of education in Sierra Leone but quality and reliability have been major barriers to its effective use. In recent years, not only have digital data collection started to play a larger role, but working with Fab Inc, the Government has improved the quality, reliability and accessibility of this data. This is enabling the developing of digital decision-making tools that can help pinpoint where structural investments in things like infrastructure should be prioritised.

The government Teachers Service Commission (TSC) has also been developing its data systems to enable improved teacher management. In collaboration with the One Tablet Per School programme, the TSC is exploring ways of generating better information on teacher attendance, linking this to payroll, improving licensing and gradually moving towards teacher performance management using data.

The UK aid-funded Leh Wi Lan programme has invested in data systems at school level to advance its goal of improving secondary education. At first, Leh Wi Lan hired school support officers to use tablets to collect real-time school-level data at a national scale. More recently, the programme supported Principals and MBSSE School Quality Assurance Officers to use tablets for data collection in all government secondary schools. Each month over 150 SQAOs and 700+ schools use digital tools to both improve the quality of the process they deliver but also collect and submit valuable insight from school level on a daily basis, enabling the monitoring of real-time performance indicators and supporting more regular in-depth analysis of school quality than was previously possible.

Until recently all of these strands were still relatively separate, but they have started to move together around a vision for integrated data systems and use that combines annual and daily data from various sources, uses innovative platforms to display key metrics and supports decision making process and behaviour change throughout the system.

Through this improvement in data quality and integration, decision-makers are better able to pinpoint gaps in service delivery, identify inequities to address, and pivot to better support learning in times of disruption and emergency. At school level, data is being used to inform school management and leading to improvements in prioritisation, resourcing, teaching practices, and removing barriers faced by the most marginalised. At district level monitoring of staff and schools is being done on a monthly basis with follow up actions being identified and acted upon. At national level data can be used to inform policy development, monitor progress and better understand resourcing priorities.

A panel led by MBSSE with partners including EdTech Hub, Leh Wi Lan and Fab Inc, will reflect on the key areas where data has been strengthened and discuss an innovative, integrated data system and its application for policy priorities in Sierra Leone.

Sub Unit

• General Pool

Chair

• Daniel Waistell, Cambridge Education

Individual Presentations

• Paper 2 - Mapping the data ecosystem and developing data solutions based on the findings. - Iman Beoku-Betts, EdTech Hub

• Paper 3 - Turning a weak Annual School Census process into a dynamic decision-making tool - Paul Atherton, Fab Inc