Africa-Press – Uganda. The government, through Education ministry, has enhanced the capacity of various local governments’ core teams that have been struggling to implement the redeveloped Education Management Information System (EMIS).
This system is used to track students and facilitate more informed decision-making in the education sector.
According to a statement issued by the Ministry of Education and signed by the Permanent Secretary, Ms Ketty Lamaro, last week, the training involved eight participants from each district and five from each municipality and city.
This training took place in their respective local governments from September 3 to September 8.The participants comprised district education officers, inspectors of schools, planners, heads of learning institutions and education officers.
Mr Robert Bellarmine Okudi, the commissioner for education planning in the Education ministry, said the ministry, in conjunction with Information, Communication, Technology and National Guidance, recently redeveloped the EMIS into a robust and full one-stop centre for reliable and timely data and management information for education and sports sector.
Mr Okudi said the government is expanding the system’s implementation, emphasising the need to build a substantial workforce of officers equipped with knowledge and skills to ensure the efficient utilisation and management of the system.
Mr Dennis Mugimba, the Education ministry spokesperson, told this publication in an interview that the training was timely since some officers were still fidgeting with the system.
“Personally, I get calls from schools for help. They complain about challenges of uploading information onto the system and the issue of Internet. Sometimes the information they upload is incomplete. They were not used to the process of collecting information from parents,” Mr Mugimba said.
He added that the core teams in-charge of EMIS in all local governments are required to use the system to update learners’ profiles, information about their parents, including location and address, learners’ academic progress and mov ement from one school to another.
“We should be able to forecast how many learners we shall expect at a certain level and plan for necessary resources and manpower. We shall also be able to tell whether some learners dropped out or they simply changed schools as this will inform decision-making,” he added.
ABOUT EMIS
Education Management Information System (EMIS) is a new system introduced by government to manage learners’ information right from primary to university level.
The system has a web portal, which institutions of learning access to make their EMIS user accounts and update information about their learners.
It also tracks transfers between schools, enrollment and attendance.
The system is expected to handle records of 15 million learners from more than 48,000 institutions of learning across the country.
Records at the Ministry of Education indicate that information of about 11.5 million learners of the 15 million has so far been uploaded onto the system.
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