Emis User Guide

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Brian Scarano

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Aug 3, 2024, 5:13:08 PM8/3/24

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While nearly all lower-income countries have some form of EMIS in place, many have gaps in capabilities that need to be filled and upgrades that need to be made. A new guide developed through a partnership between the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) and GPE, and informed by experts from the business community, provides a methodical approach for ministries of education to navigate those challenges.

A strong education management information system (EMIS) can be a game-changer: It provides a way to measure education quality, reach and impact and that, in turn, powers effective, data-informed decision making.

The guide was created to fill a need that was identified as a priority by ministries participating in the Education Data Solutions Roundtable (DRT). The DRT was a GPE initiative that brought together country officials with experts from the business community as well as from the UIS and other education and development partners to define needs in the area of data collection and accessibility, and to identify solutions to those needs.

An excellent EMIS should collect data from various sources, such as individual schools, teachers and students, and then be able to transform the data into formats that bring all the pieces together in ways that are comprehensible to non-technical officials.

Achieving this requires particular staff skills to make the systems work together effectively. Often, school systems collect the right data but do not have the capability to aggregate, analyze and then present those data.

So, data engineers need to understand policies and provide functionality accordingly. For example, data that focus on equity and equality mandates are in especially high demand as these data show whether children from all demographic groups get the education they deserve. An EMIS might also reveal on a timely basis whether there are spikes in school dropout rates and what their causes might be.

The guide will help users work though issues such as those previously mentioned. But its reach extends even further. It covers every key element of how to go about the assessment, acquisition and implementation process.

For countries that decide to include SDG 4 indicators in their EMIS, the guide includes a section on specific elements of SDG 4 and how to measure them. To this purpose, the UIS produced a companion piece: the Operational Guide to Using EMIS to Monitor SDG 4.

The UIS is releasing a dedicated microsite for EMIS to facilitate strategic decision-making, policy formulation and better management of education by ministries of education. The site is also meant to address the needs expressed by representatives of national EMIS units, Member States, partners and key stakeholders.

It provides resources on EMIS standards, including operational guidance to monitor SDG 4, examples of EMIS software, EMIS questionnaires, an EMIS typology report, the Statistical Year Book, EMIS quality assessment tools as well as other relevant tools to help countries establish or improve on an EMIS.