Repost: Written by me, originally published by Human Network International (HNI)
Across Senegal primary schools have replaced an unwieldy paper-based reporting system. Standardized testing results for reading and math are now submitted to the Ministry of Education using DataWinners SMS Questionnaires and simple mobile phones.
Data Administrators at the Ministry of Education built questionnaires, and registered more than 9,500 schools and administrators into the system. The project is known as PALME: Partenariat pour l’Amélioration de la Lecture et des Mathématiques à l’Ecole Elémentaire.
This success story was featured in USAID’s Catalog of Development Technologies (PDF).
The goal of PALME to improve the reading and math skills of more than one million students in all of Senegal’s primary schools.
The administrators were trained by the Ministry of Education with help from Human Network International (HNI).
Data is recorded in real time in DataWinners cloud-based database. The standardized test results are easily accessed by data administrators and regional and district officials for verification.
With DataWinners the Ministry has shortened the time required to collect data while increasing the accuracy of the data and compliance with reporting requirements. Primary school directors are currently submitting SMS data with a 95% success rate. The Ministry is looking to expand their use of DataWinners to collect statistical data for all of their projects.
