Quality data is essential for informed planning and decision making in education sector. Pakistan has a devolved education system in which provinces are autonomous in terms of data collection and decision making. Provincial education departments used to collect data through different arrangements such as Annual School Census (ASC) and Real-Time Monitoring Systems (RTMS). ASC has been in place for last three decades to collect, collate and share education data with policy makers. After devolution in 2011, provincial Education Management Information Systems (EMISs) continued with ASC, but uniformity and standardisation of education data was lost due to disparities between provinces. Therefore, Federal Ministry of Education and Professional Training has been facing challenges in having uniform chain of collecting education related data for the purpose of national planning and reporting to international bodies as part of international commitments.
To address these challenges, Pakistan’s Federal Ministry of Education & Professional Training has recently developed a Data Standardisation Framework (DSF) to provide excellent quality, standardised data for informed decision making at national level and meeting requirements of international reporting on Sustainable Development Goal (SDG)s. The DSF was prepared after exhaustive consultative process involving all key stakeholders at the national and provincial levels and approved by federal ministry at the Inter-Provincial Education Ministerial Conference in the middle of 2023.
DSF identifies seventy-one indicators that are essential to meet the international and national reporting requirements. The Framework also provides locally contextualised UNESCO definitions for various education indicators along with the method for calculations and data sources. Data will be collected by all provinces on these standardised indicators to meet provincial, national and international obligations. At federal level, Pakistan Institute of Education (PIE) is mandated with taking lead on the data standardisation and function as national hub to help collaboration between provincial education ministries and other stakeholders.
Standardisation of formats and structures will help improving the data quality by reducing redundancy and duplication. It will make data use more efficient as uniform data will be available at central location. Standardisation process will also improve accuracy and consistency of education decision making by setting up uniform processes for collection, recording, analysis and interpretation of data. This Information will be readily available and accessible to all stakeholders including decision makers, researchers, and citizens.
Moreover, it will help the country for improving the quality of education data and report progress on implementation of SDG4 to meet international commitments. It will help provinces and federal government immensely through strengthened provincial EMISs and the integration of databases into a national data hub. It will provide strong basis for having informed planning, right resource allocation and targeted strategies for improving quality of education. Moreover, a comparative analysis of education indicators between provinces will be possible.
Nevertheless, challenges also exist which can impede the efficacy of data standardisation process. These factors include unavailability of standardised guidelines on data analysis, short deadlines for data collection and competing priorities of teachers. Moreover, limited understanding of teachers about disabilities can lead to a poor-quality data on children with disabilities. Finally, lack of inter-departmental coordination is a challenge. Data on 5/11 SDG4 indicators is reported by Pakistan Bureau of Statistics. Developing a synchronisation between different data sources would therefore be of critical importance.
In summary, the DSF is an exciting development that could be a momentous change if implemented efficiently. This ambitious framework seems to guide standardizing the ASC’s indicators, processes, and systems across provinces to improve data-driven policy formulation for national stakeholders and meet international reporting commitments such as SDG4 indicators.