By Allan Findlay
The EDOREN project works closely with a number of other DfID projects to share best practice and data for the benefit of all. One example of this was working with the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) project supported by SPARC – DfID’s programme for State Partnership for Accountability, Responsiveness and Capability.
The MDG programme was coming to a close and had a comprehensive database of all of the interventions it had supported in water, health and education in Nigeria. This data, collected by mobile phone apps included photographs and GIS coordinates of a very large number of schools in Nigeria.
EDOREN was provided with copies of this data and have carried out a successful pilot linking it to existing Annual School Census (ASC) data and other project data for a number of DfID-supported programmes.
This linking has allowed EDOREN to have coordinates for the majority of the schools supported by the Education Sector Support Programme in Nigeria (ESSPIN) and the Girls’ Education Project (GEP3) and use the data to support school identification and data presentation
Distribution of Public Schools in Lagos
For all of the surveys EDOREN is involved in, we are now able to look at the sample and clustering geographically to confirm the sampling approach taken. The newly established Teacher’s Development Program (TDP) and the Developing Effective Private Education – Nigeria (DEEPEN) programmes for private schools in Lagos now have additional data with which to review their baseline samples and coverage.
The results from previous surveys linked to households, such as the Nigerian Education Data Survey (NEDS) and the Demographic and Household Survey (DHS), can now be compared to school conditions captured in the ASC to look for relationships between school conditions and out of school children, for example.
Enumerators in the various survey teams can now use the school coordinates and photos held in their tablet computers to locate schools. This also assists with unique school identification, which is critical in Nigeria where school naming is problematic due to poor spelling, and poor official school naming.
Geographic data can now be linked to ESSPIN’s student and teacher attendance tracking pilot programme to see if there are geographic factors in school attendance. Similarly, ESSPIN’s roll-out Local Government Area (LGA) database, which will hold data on every school and teacher, can be updated with photographs, school coordinates and maps showing school locations.
The pilot work by EDOREN on the school intervention database will use the photographic and geo-code data to select and identify schools and present a full school data history from 2009 to present day.
Work with ESSPIN on environmental studies of schools will benefit from the history of infrastructure improvements by ESSPIN and MDG, as well as baseline photographs of schools and facilities.
Co-operation works, and every day we find more ways to get a better picture of education in Nigeria.
For further information on any of the above please contact EDOREN.
EDOREN 