School Priorities - SNV

Information Management
Educators need accurate, relevant and
up-to-date information in order to
make effective decisions for their
schools. Local government bodies, including
district education offices, have long been
expected to provide information on their
budgets and the services they deliver to
the central government, but they are also
accountable to the people they serve.
For citizens to hold their governments
accountable, they need data about school
performance. Unfortunately, information is
noticeably absent from most of the districts
where SNV has been working. Educators
lack appropriate systems to collect, analyse
and disseminate data, not to mention the
ability to incorporate findings to create
positive changes in children’s education.
There is hope. New information
technologies have proven to be efficient,
affordable tools to manage large quantities
of information. The challenges now relate
to training educators on how to gather
that data, identify the most important
indicators, analyse the information and
incorporate the findings into school
planning.
The following stories detail SNV’s efforts to
work with Ugandan districts to improve the
way information is collected and managed.
Local Databases documents the lessons
learned from decentralising education data
in Bundibugyo, Rakai, Nebbi and Arua.
CU@School shows how headteachers in
Kiboga and Mbale used mobile phones
to track teacher attendance and reduce
absenteeism. And School Performance
Reviews offers a new way to conduct school
development planning based on the
experiences of Nebbi and Kabarole.
While not every actor or district has the
budget or technological capacity to install
and manage computer databases or mobilebased
reporting systems, each district can
benefit from the stories in this section, as
they all focus on bridging the gap between
collecting data and effectively using it to
improve educational quality.
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