Module A1: School records management7. Transformation, analysis and use of school records and informationAll the efforts to create, store, update and manage school records will be wasted if

the data and information are not fully and properly used to:

a. Strengthen monitoring and management in schools.

b. Report to higher levels of the education administration.

c. Inform and mobilize support from the stakeholders.

School record data and information can be used either directly, or transformed into

other forms so as to facilitate analysis, interpretation, dissemination and use.

7.1 individual school records and summary lists

School records can exist in four forms:

1. Records of individual persons (e.g. students, teachers or school staff) or of

physical items (e.g. classrooms, furniture, equipment, teaching/learning

materials, ledger of financial transactions).

2. Summary lists (e.g. of students, teachers, equipment).

3. Tally sheets to count the number of persons, school facilities or occurrences.

4. Summary tables.

These forms complement each other, as they enable us to record and present data

in ways that are more appropriate for use by different persons and for different

purposes. As mentioned in Section 6, using school records in different forms can

also help to cross-check data quality.

Records of individual persons– like the student record card can be used to store

detailed information about each person such as sex, age, grade, previous education,

language spoken at home, family conditions, disabilities, performance scores in

subjects and behavior. The same applies to teacher records. individual records can

be created and added whenever a new student or teacher joins the school. They can

also be archived or disposed of when a student or teacher has left the school.

Summary lists– like the class attendance sheet, textbook record sheet or

the student performance summary. if we want for example to compare the

characteristics of all the students in a class, it can be quite laborious to flip through a

deck of individual student record cards back and forth in trying to compare the data.

Often, a summary list can be created by copying one-by-one the names of the

students and specific characteristics such as sex, age, attendance and subject

scores into a summary list (see example 12). in this way, we can make comparisons

at a glance across the list regarding, for example, who has been most frequently

absent from school or who obtained the highest score in mathematics. Similar

summary lists may be made of teachers, school facilities, equipment, etc.

Tally sheets – are used to count the number of occurrences of individuals, items or

events that match certain criteria or characteristics. example 13 shows the results of

tallying the numbers of male and female students who match the criteria of being

either under-aged, of the correct age, or over-aged for attending Grade 1.

We create a tally sheet by going through the individual student record cards or the

summary list of students like in example 12, count and record each occurrence of

students who match these criteria. if, for example, the official age for being in Grade

1 is six years old, we can go through the individual student records (or summary list)

and look at the information about ‘Sex’ and ‘date of birth’ of every student in a class.

For each student who is under, over or exactly six years old, a new stroke is added

to the corresponding box in the tally sheet in example 13. These strokes can be

grouped five-by-five (or follow local practice) to help count the total number of

occurrences in each box. The tally counts can then be summarized in the right-hand

columns for further analysis.

Summary tables – are another important form (or transformation) of school records.

Taking example 13 above, the tally counts in the right-hand columns can be further

transformed into a summary table, as shown in example 14 below.

Summary tables serve the dual purpose of synthesizing detailed individual data

into numbers in a structured table so they can be directly analysed, interpreted

and used for monitoring and management. On the other hand, and as illustrated

in the percentages on the right-hand side of example 14, the summary counts on the

left can be used to calculate indicators to better assess the situation, identify

problems and issues, and support decision-making at the school and higher

levels of the education administration.

The percentages on the right-hand side of example 14 show that only a little over

half (53.4%) of the students in Grade 1 are of the correct age, whereas a third

(33.3%) are over-aged and 13.3% are under-aged for Grade 1. There are

proportionally less girls than boys who are of the correct age or over-aged, but there

is a greater tendency for girls to be enrolled early (under-aged). using such a

summary table, we can quickly see the differences between the access of boys and

girls to Grade 1 in this school, in order to identify ways of reducing over-aged and

under-aged enrolments.

An additional benefit of the summary tables is that, very often, such tables can

be designed and generated to sum up individual school records in ways that

correspond to the data tables in the school census questionnaire or school

reports. during the school census, the already tal- lied and summarized data can be

directly copied or transferred into the school censuses question- naire, or can be

used to prepare standard tables in school reports. This will considerably reduce the

time and workload of having to search for data and tally individual records each time

the school has to respond to the school census or submit reports.

Take for example the key summary table showing student enrolment by grade and

age. This table can be produced by tallying and summarizing the number of students

by age, grade and sex using the summary lists of students for each class in the

school.

Figure 2 shows at a glance how data and information in the original school records

can be trans- formed into summary lists, tally sheets and summary tables to be used

in further analysis and report- ing. Some of these summaries can be directly copied

into the corresponding tables in the annual school census questionnaire, and used in

school reports. More importantly, indicators (including those for EFA monitoring)

can be calculated from the tallied counts and presented in sum- mary tables.

The summary lists and tables together with indicators can be further analysed and

interpreted to give a more complete and in-depth picture about what is happening in

schools and how is progress towards achieving the eFA goals in the local area.

Of particular relevance to the information in the school records are other data about

the local popu- lation by gender, age-group, literacy level, educational attainment,

employment, occupation, pov- erty and household conditions. Such data are often

available from local government offices, or can be obtained from the national

statistics office. They are used to calculate many EFA indicators such as

enrolment ratios, intake rates, literacy rates, gender parity index (see Module

A3), and for identifying the ‘unreached’ out-of-school children and youth as described

in the next section.

7.2 ‘Reaching the unreached’

due to their proximity to the local population, often school staff, local government

officials and/or development bodies have more detailed and precise information

about the disadvantaged popula- tion in the local area. They can tell us:

Who are the disadvantaged population?

Where are they?

What are their learning needs?

What are their difficulties in accessing and participating in education?

How well do they learn in school?

Such data can help us to know who and where are the ‘unreached’ children, and

their characteristics and needs, so that appropriate measures can be taken to

encourage them and help them to partici- pate in and complete basic education

within the eFA perspective of ‘reaching the unreached’.

Through daily contacts between teachers and students, and through frequent

interactions between the school management and local communities, school

authorities can gather information about children in the local area who are not

attending school, plus those who have dropped out of school. Preliminary records

may be made of their where-abouts using information from local government bodies.

The school manager and teachers can then make follow-up visits to the households

in order to collect more detailed information about who exactly are these ‘unreached’

children, and to under- stand the circumstances and reasons for them not attending

school. Based on the findings of these visits, more effective strategies and measures

can be taken to reach these unreached children.

Other relevant data can be obtained from civil registrations, household surveys,

and other sources about the conditions of health, nutrition and sanitation of the local

population, parents’ employ- ment and occupation, and about early childhood care

and schooling in the local area. This infor- mation can be analysed alongside school

record data and summaries about grade repetition and incidents of drop-outs, so as

to better understand the challenges facing education in the local area, and for new

actions to be defined and implemented.

With respect to more advanced use of data and information contained in the school

records to reach the unreached, please refer to Training Modules A3 and A4 for

more details about indicators and data analysis, and about the use of information for

monitoring, planning and management of educa- tion, plus Training Module A5 for

information about data flow and information dissemination.

Activity 15

Examine existing school records in your school, district, province or country

and classify them according to the four forms shown in Examples 1, pp. 12-14.

Relate them to Figure 2 to deter- mine how each kind of school record can be

used, and then answer the following questions:

For school managers and staff:

1. What are the main forms of school records in your school? Please list the existing

records and indicate to which of the four forms they correspond (individual

records, summary lists, tally sheets or summary tables).

2. how do you use each kind of existing school records?

3. Which existing school record(s) can be further transformed into summary lists,

tally sheets or summary tables? how can the resulting summaries be used?

4. how would you improve the use of school records for the purposes (a), (b) and (c)

in the first paragraph of this section 7?

For district and local education officers and school inspectors:

1. What are the main forms of school records in the schools in your area? Please

list the existing school records and indicate to which of the four forms they

correspond (individual records, summary lists, tally sheets or summary tables).

2. how should the district and local education offices use the data and information

contained in each kind of existing school record?

3. Which existing school record(s) should be further transformed into summary lists,

tally sheets or summary tables for use by the district and local education offices?

What kind of summaries? how will they be used?

4. What should be done in order to improve the use of school records for the

purposes (a), (b) and (c) in the first paragraph of this section 7?

For central and provincial education administrators :

1. To your knowledge, what are the main forms of school records that are used in

the schools in your country or province? Please list some of the existing school

records and indicate to which of the four forms they correspond (individual

records, summary lists, tally sheets or summary tables).

2. how should the data and information contained in each kind of existing school

records be used by the central and provincial education administration?

3. Which existing school record(s) can be further transformed into summary lists,

tally sheets or summary tables for use by the central and provincial education

administration? What kind of summaries? how will they be used?

4. What should be done to improve the use of school records for the purposes (a),

(b) and (c) in the first paragraph of this section 7?