The purpose of the Unlocking Data initiative is to build a community of practice that connects individuals and organisations for the purpose of learning and sharing. The community of practice includes African scholars, NGOs, national statistics offices and policy-makers who are working to improve access to and use of education data, largely at the country level. The intended outcome is to increase the effectiveness of members in their efforts to ‘unlock’ education data, increasing its availability and use f
Microdata relating to education in Africa is difficult to access and for African researchers and policymakers, the collection of primary data is often beyond their financial resources. Unlocking the patchwork of data collected for administration, assessment, baseline evaluations, landscaping studies and feasibility assessments would give decision-makers a full picture of the state of education in their countries. Giving scholars and policymakers in these regions access to this data will not only increase th
Discussions at our workshops and steering group meetings have indicated that the first action needed to achieve our goal of unlocking education data is mapping current data availability on topics and geographies of relevance to the community. The mapping will ask the following questions: What do we know about what exists? What are the gaps and what more do we need? Diagnosing the current situation is a necessary baseline in advocating for change. At this stage, we will not focus on any particular type of da