Basseterre, St. Kitts, November 07, 2013 (SKNIS): The Education Management Information System (EMIS) Department in the Ministry of Education is currently taking steps to strengthen its administrative data system with a three day workshop that is geared towards ensuring improved reliability, accuracy and availability of data.
The objectives of the November 6 to 8 workshop entitled “Strengthening Administrative Data System” are to address the factors that limit the current production of administrative data, the causes that limit its production and current use as well as strengthen the institutional capacity for the culture of evidence based decision making.
Director of the EMIS Department Ian Morson stated that it is anticipated that the workshops will further strengthen the Ministry to develop policies that will enhance the overall learning environment in which students are taught as well as their learning outcomes.
“The Ministry of Education realises that capacity building at this institutional level is pivotal to the overall level of development data collection process,” Mr. Morson noted. “It is against this background that the Ministry of Education planned a series of capacity building workshops.”
He added that as part of the process of improving and strengthening the administrative data management systems within the Education Sector, participants will be sensitized to the importance of providing timely and high quality data and their role and responsibilities as educators in that regard.
The Hon. Nigel Carty, Minister of Education, underscored the significance of data collection within the Government.
“I do think that data collection is important because people in the country deserve to understand where our greatest needs are, what are greatest lacks are, where our greatest deficiencies are,” the Minister explained. “They need to be able to appreciate why Governments, ministries and agencies within the Government may need to apply resources in a particular way because although there are and always will be competing demands for the limited resources, we in
Government and you as administrators have to be able to justify to the public why the resources are being used in a particular way.”
The Minister added that the workshop will assist the Ministry in being in a better position to use the data generated at the schools for the direction of the institutions.
The workshop was a collaborative effort between the Ministry of Education and the OECS Education Development Management Unit (EDMU).