Impact Story | Strengthening school management and data reporting in The Gambia and Eswatini
Eswatini and The Gambia have adopted the DHIS2 SEMIS App to transition from aggregate to individual-level education data, providing more granular information in close to real time.
Governments around the world rely on data to make decisions about their education systems, with the quality of those decisions linked closely to the quality of the data itself. From student and staff daily attendance, to academic performance results, school transfer information, and more—having access to timely, accurate, individual-level education data supports education planning and delivery at all levels. In Eswatini and The Gambia, education leaders have begun using DHIS2 and the SEMIS App to transition from paper-based and aggregate data reporting to near real-time, individual-level education data.
In The Gambia, where DHIS2 had been used as the national health management information system since 2009, the Ministry of Basic and Secondary Education began customizing DHIS2 for education data in 2018 with support from HISP WCA. In Eswatini, the Ministry of Education and Training (MoET), with support from UNICEF Eswatini, embarked on a project with the HISP Centre at the University of Oslo (UiO), HISP Uganda, and HISP Mozambique to configure and deploy DHIS2 for Education in 2020. In 2023, both countries launched pilot projects to implement the SEMIS app for individual-level data and student records, building on their prior successes with DHIS2. Early reports indicate that SEMIS is user friendly and responsive to school needs, supporting ongoing efforts related to reducing teacher and student absences, streamlining student record management, targeting support for at-risk students, strengthening cross-domain collaboration, and more. This progress is especially noteworthy on the African continent, where, according to UNESCO, the Association for the Development of Education in Africa, and the African Union, more than three quarters of countries do not currently have sufficient data to monitor education outcomes.
“SEMIS is a very good tool to have at the school level. (…) Enrollment is much easier, and it is very reliable.” Zweli Mayisela, SEMIS implementation data team member, Charles Wesley High School, Eswatini
This impact story was originally published on the DHIS2 website.
