ESSPIN helps make Every Child Count in Kwara State

The Education Sector Support Programme in Nigeria (ESSPIN), is a six year UK Department for International Development funded programme supporting Federal and State authorities as they work both to reform the governance of education and to improve the quality of basic education available to all Nigerian children. An effective Education Management Information System (EMIS), providing solid data for developing policies and for planning and budgeting, is an essential part of the process. A key component of ESSPIN’s work is to provide practical support to improve school censuses to get accurate data on schools, teachers and pupils.

ESSPIN has been collaborating on the development of EMIS in the five states where it works and Kwara’s Annual School Census (ASC) provides an interesting example of how EMIS is being strengthened. In the state where the Ministry of Education motto is “Every Child Counts”, there was clearly a need to find out much more about the state’s schools – management, staffing, facilities, resources etc. and, not least, that every school child was counted! The ASC in December 2009 was a clear departure from previous years. There have been persistent problems with ASC data due to poor training and sensitisation of Head Teachers, who were left on their own to fill in and return the form, and who did not believed in the relevance of the exercise, or who did not understand the excessively long and complicated questionnaires then being used.

But a new approach has been rolled out which has re-examined every stage of the census process and facilitated the collection of information from schools to support new habits of evidence-based planning. Enumerators have gone to every school in Kwara State to fill in the ASC form, and Field Coordinators have been trained to help them by providing guidance and advice. Crucially, awareness has been raised amongst participants – Head Teachers, Enumerators, as well as those responsible for policy and planning across the education sector– regarding the enormous value of having reliable information on the state of Kwara’s schools. The enumerators in Kwara have been promoting the ASC by wearing high-visibility census vests - taking great pride in these and in the work they are doing and generating publicity and support for the state-wide exercise.