The Practices and Problems of Education Information System (EIS) Management in Oromia
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Date
2010-06
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
This descriptive study was sought to examine the practices and problems of EIS
management in Oromia. The study areas incorporated 64 schools, 16 districts, 6 zones, 2
city administrations and OEB, which were sampled through stratified random sampling
and Simple random sampling techniques. Out of these areas, 20 OEB EMIS staff, 16 ZED
statisticians, 34 DEO statisticians, 72 school principals were included in the study on
purpose. Overall, out of 142 intended respondents for the questionnaire 128(90.14%)
were actually participated in the study. Besides 11 interviewees - 2 from OEB, 3 from
ZED, 3 from DEO and 3 from schools were the subject of the study. Moreover, 20 PTA
members from three schools were also the discussion group for the study. To achieve
what the study purported to attain and gather data from the respondents questionnaires,
coupled with interview, focus group discussion (FGD), and document analysis were
utilized. The data obtained were tabulated, analyzed and interpreted using the descriptive
method. The data were statistically treated using frequency counts, percentages, standard
deviation, rank order correlation coefficient, the chi-square test, ยท t-test and one-way
classification of ANOVA. The result of the study indicated that EM1S had been
conceptualized as data gathering devices from the field to inform decisions at national
level. Hence, EMIS functions were limited to data gathering at schools, to summarizing
at DEO and ZED. The EMIS does not include all aspects of education. Mainly
datalinformation about educational processes and outputs was rarely existed in EMIS.
Besides, qualitative aspects of education never appeared in the system. The quantitative
ones dominate the approach. The available EMIS outputs were underutilized in areas like
planning, monitoring, development of projects and programs, and allocating resources
particularly at schools, DEO, and ZED. The demand and utilization of EMIS outputs
lVerefound to be low at lower levels. Moreover, the EMIS outputs of the region appeared
to be low in quality in terms of accuracy, presentation and timeliness. Overall, the EMIS
of the region suffered from human and material capacity constraints. The conclusion is
thus, EIS management of the region is not effective to serve the functions it intends to
serve. Therefore, the researcher recommended OEB, ZED, DEO, and schools to act on
redesigning EMIS to make it demand driven supply net work, on the development of
demand and utilization of EMIS outputs on the part of users, and on capacity building
activities.
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Keywords
(EIS) Management