Call for Evidence and Learning: Strengthening crisis and risk-related data and institutional education information systems

We are thrilled to announce UNESCO’s second call for evidence and learning on strengthening education information systems and improved data in emergencies and protracted crises (EiEPC). This call aims to plug the gap in evidence and actionable learning for those working on EiEPC data and system strengthening by developing quality and publicly available practice-based case studies.

Building on the success of the first call conducted in 2021 and the publication of six case studies on the INEE website, UNESCO is seeking more examples of attempts to strengthen institutional education information systems and improve crisis and risk-related data in emergencies and protracted crises. 

Evidence and Learning compiled through this call will be shared and disseminated on the INEE website as case studies developed by UNESCO in collaboration with the practitioners implementing the practices in a curated resource collection. All information on the process is detailed on the UNESCO Strengthening crisis and risk-related data and institutional education information systems webpage. Evidence and learning will also be included on the new INEE Evidence Platform (currently under development) which will serve as a go-to interactive space for INEE members and other partners, including practitioners, policymakers, and donor agencies, interested in engaging in, learning from, and taking up sound research.

Submissions will be peer reviewed to ensure the quality and relevance of the examples and associated evidence, their alignment with sector standards, and the contribution of the learning to others working on EiE,  

This UNESCO project is funded by Education Cannot Wait, NORCAP, and SIDA, aims to enhance the quality and coordinated use of institutional education information systems for EiE.

Submissions can be focused on any or all parts of the data value chain, from the enabling environment and data production through data sharing and use. Through this second call for evidence and learning, UNESCO is attempting to address identified knowledge and evidence gaps in EiE practice. Submissions should include evidence and learning that contribute to answering: 

1. How can crisis and risk-related education data within national education systems be strengthened? 
2. How can education actors, including UNESCO, strengthen the use and sharing of relevant crisis and risk-related data? 
3. How can crisis and risk-related data be better coordinated and harmonized to support system strengthening aims within national education systems and across the humanitarian-development nexus? 

Who can submit? We are looking for submissions from all EiE actors involved in work on crisis and risk-related data and the strengthening of institutional education information systems, including: 

• Ministries of education and other public sector organizations 
• Community-based organizations 
• Civil society organizations 
• UN Agencies/International NGOs  
• Coordination mechanisms (clusters or sector working groups)  
• National NGOs  
• Universities/Research Institutes  
• Donors 
• Private sector organizations 

UNESCO encourages submissions from locally-led organizations and actors working with national education systems at decentralized levels. Submissions can be in English, French, and Spanish.

The submission platform is open until Thursday 20 October 2022:
http://bit.ly/3KkWMkN

For more information, please consult the guide for submission of evidence and learning on practices related to strengthening institutional education information systems and improved crisis and risk-related data in emergencies and protracted crises available in English, French, and Spanish.

If you have questions regarding the call or would like more information, please do not hesitate to get in touch with the team via : [email protected].

Focus on the first six case studies

You can also consult these in full in the curated and dedicated INEE resource collection.

Uganda – District Health Information Software (DHIS2) and University of Oslo

The role of the District Health Information Software (DHIS2) for Education in response to Covid-19 emergency: as an open-source web-based platform, DHIS2 has been used to capture, validate, and analyze health data for the last two decades in middle- and low-income countries. Since 2019 Uganda has piloted, and implemented DHIS2 for the decentralized education management information system at the district level(DEMIS) allowing the districts to capture validate analyze visualizing use data from schools to support routing planning and allocation of resources, monitoring and support supervision and also inform evidence-based decision making by the district leadership and Education team. In the context of Covid-19 emergency in Uganda, the flexibility of DHIS2 allowed rapid data collection including key data on enrollment, special education needs and availability of WASH facilities at district levels which are key to plan for comprehensive education emergencies interventions. Flexibility of this system allowed a reconfiguration to support a national data poll on private teacher information during school closures for government and partners to intervene and provide support to these teachers who were not receiving salary.

Democratic Republic of Congo - Save the Children International 

The Research on school dropouts, as part of the REALISE project was initiated with the aim to identify and monitor girls at risk of dropping out of school as well as to put in place community-based mechanisms to retain a maximum number of girls in school. This study focused on girls (more at risk of dropping out, especially as the context is particularly marked by GBV) in primary schools (4th, 5th, 6th), secondary schools (7th and 8th) and learners in remedial education centers (level 1, 2 and 3), and had the following objectives :  

• to monitor children to identify those who are at risk of dropping out of school,  
• to inform the school and its management team as soon as possible so that they can take action, or involve others to take action  
• support the school management team to create a set of interventions that will help children return to and stay in school.  

México – Mexicanos Primeros

The back-to-school index project uses open-source public data to build an interactive platform that provides support and guidance for the management of the opening and closing of 140,000 public and private schools in Mexico. It aims at offering decision makers in school communities or model that provides different recommendations on how it went to open schools, balancing the monitoring of the epidemic epidemiological situation with the levels of academic functioning and infrastructure conditions of schools, and also considering the demographic conditions of families and households with which marginalized students from optimal access to and use of remote education.

Bangladesh - BRAC Institute of Educational Development

The Rapid retooling and adaptation of EIE data processes and programming in the Rohingya Camps during the COVID-19 pandemic : BRAC has retooled and adapted its Humanitarian Play Labs through the design of the Pashe Achhi telecommunication model which delivers the programme to affected communities, including Rohingya refugees, remotely. Through this adaptation BRAC has rapidly developed remote data collection processes and conducted extensive capacity building, internally and externally, to ensure programmatic and educational continuity. The practice provides useful insights on how to conduct rapid adaptation of programming and data processes in EIEPC settings, with relevance to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Yemen - Development Organization for Women and children adult (ADO)

The in-depth Education Needs Assessment in Hajjah governorate conducted by ADO is an assessment which includes different complementary tools that aims to determine the educational needs of the target schools in Hajjah governorate, and most other districts in terms of school infrastructure teachers and students. The key objective was to capture comprehensive data to provide a comprehensive understanding of the challenges and vulnerabilities faced by communities especially in terms of school infrastructures, teachers, students. Some of the key learnings of this practice include : 

• Access to education and learning environment are highly impacted by the complex active conflict in Yemen since 2015, and barriers to education have been reinforced by the COVID-19 pandemic since 2020
• Focus groups discussion can be key to gain information in these types of contexts
• Protection issues need to be taken into account not only regarding school environment but overall concerns over protection of children and learners from attacks 
• The question of emotional distress of the children in need of psycho-social support and providing psychological care are central
• Creating linkages with work on gender and be gender-sensitive is critical, especially when operating in  the North of Yemen where local authorities can be a challenge to needs assessment on this specific issue 

Gaza the West Bank Lebanon, Syria and Jordan - UNRWA

The UNRWA EiE indicator bank aims to strengthen and harmonize the monitoring and evaluation of the activities implemented across UNRWA fields of operation (Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan). The EiE indicator bank resulted in the harmonization of indicators, titles, definitions, methodology, calculation allowing a better comparability of the results between the fields. Some good practices and learnings from this first step of the practice included :

• The integration of 24 indicators from the EiE data bank into UNWRA’s EMIS for each field to report on
• The development of a dashboard to visualize results and information collected by EiE indicators (available quarterly for a given year on the data source)
• The implementation of a participatory approach: with the inclusion of external partners and a collaborative internal process with colleagues from the different fields to create a sense of ownership across these practices and ensure ownership and usability in the different countries, with the aim of improving the management in situations of emergency.
• The importance of building on existing tools and practices of different organizations to contextualize them and adapt them to the areas of action and situations relevant to UNRWA.