Data for Excellence: Co-creating Solutions to Achieve Equitable Learning Outcomes in Tanzania
Since 2020, the Global Partnership for Education Knowledge and Innovation Exchange (GPE KIX), in collaboration with Canada’s International Development Research Centre (IDRC), has supported strengthening data systems for education.
In this blog post, Festo Mboya, Monitoring Evaluation Research and Learning Manager at CAMFED Tanzania, and Anna Sawaki, Director of Programs and Partnerships of CAMFED Tanzania, detail the collaborative process of improving data collection and analysis in schools in Tanzania. Working in close partnership with government and school communities across the country, the work seeks to harness the power of data and support improved learning outcomes, particularly for marginalized girls.
In Tanzania, a national commitment to introducing and supporting gender inclusive and equitable education systems has led to important policy shifts, including the 2021 reversal of a ruling that prevented young mothers from returning to school. However, for these policy shifts to lead to meaningful changes in practice at a sub-national level and inclusive, equitable learning outcomes for all students, particularly girls, processes for collecting, interpreting and using education data must be further strengthened.
CAMFED therefore embarked on a GPE KIX–funded research project in 2024 to strengthen education data systems so that they better respond to the needs of marginalized learners in Tanzania. The project is using a collaborative and participatory approach to bring together government and school-level stakeholders to co-create solutions for lasting impact. It draws on CAMFED’s existing Data for Education Excellence model, which has been shown capable of unlocking the power of both data and school communities to dismantle barriers to girls' education. This model is informed by — and will be adapted with the support of — local experts to ensure it is contextually relevant to Tanzania.
Developing a co-creation approach
In its first year, the project focused on establishing the systems and partnerships needed to ensure the research is embedded in, and responds to, the Tanzanian context. A key milestone was the establishment of a 20-member technical working group, composed of representatives from the Tanzania Ministry of Education, the President’s Office for Regional Administration and Local Government and school-level stakeholders. Stakeholder mapping was conducted before the technical working group was established to ensure that all relevant voices were included — and heard — in this collaboration.
Since its inception, the technical working group has been instrumental in shaping the direction of the research, ensuring it aligns with national education policies and priorities so that the work is relevant to the local context. The group’s quarterly meetings and the co-development process have contributed to a greater sense of ownership of the data among government representatives and a greater understanding of specific context-based challenges among the CAMFED project team.
CAMFED engaged Altamont Group, a regional research partner, to support the design and implementation of the study and contribute technical expertise to the data collection, analysis and reporting processes.
Understanding country-specific barriers to effective data use
The technical working group and CAMFED conducted a situational and needs analysis across six districts in rural Tanzania. It produced insights into how education data is currently being captured and used and identified areas where data collection and utilization could be further improved. We found that although Tanzania has a structured, multi-tiered education data system capable of tracking key indicators such as attendance and academic performance, data usability at the school level is constrained by limited staff capacity, limited infrastructure and resources, and the absence of complementary qualitative data.
In addition, although data on student dropouts is collected in detail, it is often aggregated in public reports under broad categories such as “truancy.” This approach makes it difficult to capture the specific vulnerabilities that result in students — especially girls — who have left school as a result of intersecting barriers they face. These findings of the situational and needs analysis underscore the need for greater transparency and granularity in data reporting to facilitate targeted, informed interventions.
The technical working group members' participation as active co-researchers and strategic collaborators in designing the situational and needs assessment and analysing the findings allowed CAMFED to learn from their firsthand experiences and local expertise, deepening our understanding of how national data systems operate in practice. Our continued partnership will be critical in upcoming phases of the research project, when a roadmap for scaling the strengthened use of data at local and sub-national levels will be developed. The community, district, ward and national levels represented within the technical working group will be key to ensuring that the model we co-develop is both relevant and feasible for nationwide implementation.
Looking forward
With the project’s foundations now in place, CAMFED and the technical working group will oversee a pilot study to examine the extent to which the Data for Education Excellence model can be adapted and adopted to strengthen data use in government schools.
The pilot study will provide valuable insight for the project’s final phase, at which point CAMFED and the technical working group will explore how the enhanced use of data at a sub-national level could be integrated at scale to contribute meaningfully to national education data reform and equitable solutions for improved learning outcomes across Tanzania.
