By Kemo Cham
The government`s plan of monitoring the learning process has received a major boost with over $200,000 worth of equipment in the form of computers and office equipment.
The package from the United Nations children agency Unicef was secured with the help of the United Kingdom`s international development arm, DFID, and it was handed over to the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology (MEST), according to a release by the UN agency.
The MEST is working towards setting up situation rooms in Freetown and all district education offices to monitor schooling across the country.
This hadn’t been possible because of unavailability of reliable data, information management and reporting systems.
The DFID package includes 18 desktop computers, 30 laptops, 16 500Gg external hard drives for data back-up, 149 mobile phones, 15 three-in-one printers, and other computer consumables. It also includes office furniture - 20 office executive tables, 20 office chairs, 18 filing cabinets, and other office stationery and equipment).
These are expected to fulfill a critical need for a fully functioning education monitoring system.
“This will provide a network of constantly updating data that will help the Ministry run a modern schooling system where information flows rapidly from the most remote schools straight into the Ministry headquarters in Freetown, while also being available and stored at the district education office,” said UNICEF Representative, Geoff Wiffin, in the statement.
The school monitoring programme will build on and use an existing system put in place in response to the effect of the Ebola epidemic on education. Through the RapidPro SMS monitoring system, data has been collected since April when schools resumed after the prolonged break caused by the epidemic.
In this context, say officials, the situation rooms will also help in monitoring the availability of vital hygiene supplies that help keep about 1.8 million children in schools safe.
In every ward across the country, three community monitors have been selected from existing community-based structures [Back to School Committees, School Management Committees and Community-Teachers associations], and trained with the support of UNICEF to run the monitoring. But schools will also be able to make reports to the situation rooms using phones.
Such systems provide fast, inexpensive and quality data for monitoring through basic mobile phone handsets in a way that was not possible before, said UNICEF.
In the medium to long-term, it added, the availability of data at both district levels and MEST headquarters will allow stronger planning and policy-making based on evidence routinely gathered through the situation rooms.
(C) Politico Online 12/10/15
