Education management information system (EMIS)

The Education Management Information System (EMIS) is an ICT management tool that “integrates people, technology and practices in the process of collecting, capturing and processing data from different sources to generate information to aid informed decision making for operation and managerial functions of the education and sports sector”

A successful EMIS is built around three great pillars and these pillars are; people, practices and technology. EMIS comprehensively brings these pillars together to ensure that there is timely, cost effective and user appropriate information in support of management in the Education Sector. In order to effectively sustain EMIS, full integration of these three pillars is key.  At inception, EMIS was conceptualized as a fully-fledged system capable of providing management information on all key aspects of education in the country to facilitate evidence-based decision making.

EMIS was thus conceived to enable MoES headquarters to collect, capture and process data to generate management information that could help in planning and evidence-based decision making at all levels. Consequently, it is expected to maintain management data on Key Performance Indicators of the sector including data in institutions, teachers, Pupils, infrastructure (i.e. school module), finances and audit (i.e. finance module), and School Inspection. It was also conceptualized to be sector wide and decentralized to district level.  Initially EMIS was designed to comprise 4 basic modules (functionalities) that include basic education statistics, personnel (excluding payroll), financial management, inspection and eventually linking up with UNEB (school outcomes).

Thereafter, additional modules were to be added as the demand for management information grows.  Some of the key outputs that use data generated from the EMIS system include annual statistical abstracts, fact sheets and booklets, district performance league tables, progress reports on JAF indicators, MDGs and EFA Goals, etc.

The Annual Schools Census (ASC) is a comprehensive collection of basic (i.e. enrolment, learner characteristics, teacher details, infrastructure, etc.) educational data for all levels of the education system (i.e. Pre- Primary, Primary, Secondary, Post Primary, BTVET, and Tertiary). The purpose of the Annual School Census exercise is to generate basic data required for planning (incl. budgeting), policy analysis, development and decision making. This is the main source of data that feeds into the system. Current data is usually required for budgeting since the government is implementing a cash budget. It’s an efficiency measure intended to ensure that the scarce resources are not unduly wasted.