DATA SYSTEMS AND DATA USE

Data systems and data use are foundational for evidence-based education policy, planning and implementation.  

While many countries have made progress in improving data availability and use, challenges remain in orienting data systems to the nuanced information countries need to address the learning crisis; ensuring the quality and timeliness of data, making data systems inclusive and accessible, and promoting organizational capacities and cultures of data use at the national, provincial, community and school levels.  

Most partner countries have established Education Management Information Systems (EMIS), however, there is a need to make data systems more user-friendly and service oriented, while also attuning them to important factors for gender equality, equity and inclusion.  

Through regional knowledge exchange hubs, partner countries can better generate and mobilize evidence to scale the impact of promising innovative approaches to strengthen data systems and data use for education; through activities such as continental symposiums, strategic partnerships between KIX Hubs, regional workshops and more.  

This work, including applied research, emerges from scoping studies and consultations with national education stakeholders in Africa and in Europe, Asia and the Pacific, where they identified three core issues:  

• Expanding and integrating data sets to understand learners and promote gender equality, equity and inclusion  
• Using platforms and tools to enhance data use  
• Expanding uses and users of data, including for public accountability  

This focus area explores effective strategies to adapt, scale, and implement promising or proven innovations in effective, equitable, and sustainable ways. It also aims to identify what factors enable, incentivize, or impede the scaling of these innovations. 

Key results

Partner countries have used GPE KIX to strengthen their data systems and expand the effective use of education data to inform planning, financing, and service delivery, moving from fragmented reporting toward more integrated, decision‑focused systems. By building evidence on how platforms can be scaled, education decision-makers in countries including The Gambia, Eswatini, Togo, Sierra Leone, and Uganda are now accessing near‑real‑time, individual‑level data to guide budgeting, teacher deployment, dropout prevention, and sub‑sector planning, including early childhood and inclusion. Supported by GPE KIX applied research, Eswatini saw the integration of disability indicators into Eswatini’s National EMIS. Additionally, a new strategic partnership is emerging between GPE KIX’s two African hubs, KIX Africa 19 and KIX Africa 21, to help African GPE partner countries integrate learning assessment indicators directly into their national EMIS platforms, strengthening evidence-based decision-making across the continent.