Module A1: School records management

7. Transformation, analysis and use of school records

and information
All the efforts to create, store, update and manage school records will be wasted if
the data and information are not fully and properly used to:
a.
b.
c.

Strengthen monitoring and management in schools.

Report to higher levels of the education administration.
Inform and mobilize support from the stakeholders.

School record data and information can be used either directly, or transformed into
other forms so as to facilitate analysis, interpretation, dissemination and use.

7.1 individual school records and summary lists

School records can exist in four forms:
1.

Records of individual persons (e.g. students, teachers or school staff) or of

physical items (e.g. classrooms, furniture, equipment, teaching/learning
materials, ledger of financial transactions).
2.
Summary lists (e.g. of students, teachers, equipment).
3.
Tally sheets to count the number of persons, school facilities or occurrences.
4.
Summary tables.
These forms complement each other, as they enable us to record and present data
in ways that are more appropriate for use by different persons and for different
purposes. As mentioned in Section 6, using school records in different forms can
also help to cross-check data quality.
Records of individual persons like the student record card can be used to store
detailed information about each person such as sex, age, grade, previous education,
language spoken at home, family conditions, disabilities, performance scores in
subjects and behavior. The same applies to teacher records. individual records can
be created and added whenever a new student or teacher joins the school. They can
also be archived or disposed of when a student or teacher has left the school.
Summary lists like the class attendance sheet, textbook record sheet or
the student performance summary. if we want for example to compare the
characteristics of all the students in a class, it can be quite laborious to flip through a
deck of individual student record cards back and forth in trying to compare the data.

Often, a summary list can be created by copying one-by-one the names of the
students and specific characteristics such as sex, age, attendance and subject
scores into a summary list (see example 12). in this way, we can make comparisons
at a glance across the list regarding, for example, who has been most frequently
absent from school or who obtained the highest score in mathematics. Similar
summary lists may be made of teachers, school facilities, equipment, etc.

Tally sheets are used to count the number of occurrences of individuals, items or
events that match certain criteria or characteristics. example 13 shows the results of
tallying the numbers of male and female students who match the criteria of being
either under-aged, of the correct age, or over-aged for attending Grade 1.
We create a tally sheet by going through the individual student record cards or the
summary list of students like in example 12, count and record each occurrence of
students who match these criteria. if, for example, the official age for being in Grade
1 is six years old, we can go through the individual student records (or summary list)
and look at the information about Sex and date of birth of every student in a class.
For each student who is under, over or exactly six years old, a new stroke is added
to the corresponding box in the tally sheet in example 13. These strokes can be
grouped five-by-five (or follow local practice) to help count the total number of
occurrences in each box. The tally counts can then be summarized in the right-hand
columns for further analysis.
Summary tables are another important form (or transformation) of school records.
Taking example 13 above, the tally counts in the right-hand columns can be further

transformed into a summary table, as shown in example 14 below.

Summary tables serve the dual purpose of synthesizing detailed individual data
into numbers in a structured table so they can be directly analysed, interpreted
and used for monitoring and management. On the other hand, and as illustrated
in the percentages on the right-hand side of example 14, the summary counts on the
left can be used to calculate indicators to better assess the situation, identify
problems and issues, and support decision-making at the school and higher
levels of the education administration.
The percentages on the right-hand side of example 14 show that only a little over
half (53.4%) of the students in Grade 1 are of the correct age, whereas a third
(33.3%) are over-aged and 13.3% are under-aged for Grade 1. There are
proportionally less girls than boys who are of the correct age or over-aged, but there
is a greater tendency for girls to be enrolled early (under-aged). using such a
summary table, we can quickly see the differences between the access of boys and
girls to Grade 1 in this school, in order to identify ways of reducing over-aged and
under-aged enrolments.
An additional benefit of the summary tables is that, very often, such tables can
be designed and generated to sum up individual school records in ways that
correspond to the data tables in the school census questionnaire or school
reports. during the school census, the already tal- lied and summarized data can be
directly copied or transferred into the school censuses question- naire, or can be
used to prepare standard tables in school reports. This will considerably reduce the
time and workload of having to search for data and tally individual records each time
the school has to respond to the school census or submit reports.
Take for example the key summary table showing student enrolment by grade and
age. This table can be produced by tallying and summarizing the number of students
by age, grade and sex using the summary lists of students for each class in the
school.

Figure 2 shows at a glance how data and information in the original school records
can be trans- formed into summary lists, tally sheets and summary tables to be used
in further analysis and report- ing. Some of these summaries can be directly copied
into the corresponding tables in the annual school census questionnaire, and used in
school reports. More importantly, indicators (including those for EFA monitoring)
can be calculated from the tallied counts and presented in sum- mary tables.
The summary lists and tables together with indicators can be further analysed and
interpreted to give a more complete and in-depth picture about what is happening in
schools and how is progress towards achieving the eFA goals in the local area.
Of particular relevance to the information in the school records are other data about
the local popu- lation by gender, age-group, literacy level, educational attainment,
employment, occupation, pov- erty and household conditions. Such data are often
available from local government offices, or can be obtained from the national
statistics office. They are used to calculate many EFA indicators such as
enrolment ratios, intake rates, literacy rates, gender parity index (see Module
A3), and for identifying the unreached out-of-school children and youth as described
in the next section.

7.2 Reaching the unreached

due to their proximity to the local population, often school staff, local government
officials and/or development bodies have more detailed and precise information
about the disadvantaged popula- tion in the local area. They can tell us:

Who are the disadvantaged population?

Where are they?

What are their learning needs?

What are their difficulties in accessing and participating in education?
How well do they learn in school?

Such data can help us to know who and where are the unreached children, and
their characteristics and needs, so that appropriate measures can be taken to
encourage them and help them to partici- pate in and complete basic education
within the eFA perspective of reaching the unreached.
Through daily contacts between teachers and students, and through frequent
interactions between the school management and local communities, school
authorities can gather information about children in the local area who are not
attending school, plus those who have dropped out of school. Preliminary records
may be made of their where-abouts using information from local government bodies.
The school manager and teachers can then make follow-up visits to the households
in order to collect more detailed information about who exactly are these unreached
children, and to under- stand the circumstances and reasons for them not attending
school. Based on the findings of these visits, more effective strategies and measures
can be taken to reach these unreached children.
Other relevant data can be obtained from civil registrations, household surveys,
and other sources about the conditions of health, nutrition and sanitation of the local
population, parents employ- ment and occupation, and about early childhood care
and schooling in the local area. This infor- mation can be analysed alongside school
record data and summaries about grade repetition and incidents of drop-outs, so as
to better understand the challenges facing education in the local area, and for new
actions to be defined and implemented.
With respect to more advanced use of data and information contained in the school
records to reach the unreached, please refer to Training Modules A3 and A4 for more
details about indicators and data analysis, and about the use of information for
monitoring, planning and management of educa- tion, plus Training Module A5 for
information about data flow and information dissemination.

Activity 15
Examine existing school records in your school, district, province or country
and classify them according to the four forms shown in Examples 1, pp. 12-14.
Relate them to Figure 2 to deter- mine how each kind of school record can be
used, and then answer the following questions:

For school managers and staff:

1.

What are the main forms of school records in your school? Please list the
existing records and indicate to which of the four forms they correspond
(individual records, summary lists, tally sheets or summary tables).
2.
how do you use each kind of existing school records?
3.
Which existing school record(s) can be further transformed into summary lists,
tally sheets or summary tables? how can the resulting summaries be used?
4.
how would you improve the use of school records for the purposes (a), (b)
and (c) in the first paragraph of this section 7?
For district and local education officers and school inspectors:
1.

What are the main forms of school records in the schools in your area?
Please list the existing school records and indicate to which of the four forms they
correspond (individual records, summary lists, tally sheets or summary tables).
2.
how should the district and local education offices use the data and
information contained in each kind of existing school record?
3.
Which existing school record(s) should be further transformed into summary
lists, tally sheets or summary tables for use by the district and local education
offices? What kind of summaries? how will they be used?
4.
What should be done in order to improve the use of school records for the
purposes (a), (b) and (c) in the first paragraph of this section 7?
For central and provincial education administrators :
1.

To your knowledge, what are the main forms of school records that are used
in the schools in your country or province? Please list some of the existing school
records and indicate to which of the four forms they correspond (individual
records, summary lists, tally sheets or summary tables).
2.
how should the data and information contained in each kind of existing school
records be used by the central and provincial education administration?
3.
Which existing school record(s) can be further transformed into summary lists,
tally sheets or summary tables for use by the central and provincial education
administration? What kind of summaries? how will they be used?
4.
What should be done to improve the use of school records for the purposes
(a), (b) and (c) in the first paragraph of this section 7?