Objectives of the Independent Monitoring System (IMU):
The key objectives are as follows:
Provide Elementary & Secondary Education Department and its development partners with a viable means of ensuring that education sector reforms are efficiently developed and effectively implemented. Support the establishment of performance monitoring mechanisms
Deliver objective information on a monthly, qua
rterly and annual basis to donors, civil society, parents and other stakeholder for reviewing the performance of government and its officials. Increase public awareness of the status of school facilities and infrastructure and the level of education service delivery in the province, district and the school level. Provide access to information on key indicators to increase social accountability
Increase social accountability to improve governance, service delivery outcomes, planning and resource allocations to the sector
Specific tasks relating to IMU:
The IMU is responsible for ensuring that data for all key performance indicators are collected regularly on monthly basis and uploaded using Smartphones. Once collected data will be analyzed for the purpose of performance evaluation
Next, the data is presented, in an agreed format, to all relevant offices of the education department. The IMU will be responsible for ensuring accuracy and timely provision of data. It will also be required to randomly select a sample of schools to visit across various Districts in order to ensure accuracy of data. It will develop reports on remedial measures for data inconsistency, etc. Specific tasks relating to District Monitoring Unit are:
District Monitoring Officer at district level will be responsible to manage and supervise the entire operation of data collection at the school level. The DMO will also liaise with the provincial government and perform other necessary functions as and when required by the department.
475 Monitors have been recruited to collect school level data on a monthly basis. The numbers of Monitors for each district depends upon the number of schools in a given district. The main responsibility of the Monitors is to visit approximately three to four schools, during school hours, unannounced and collect information. Information is fed to a predesigned smartphone application documenting all the key variables of the school and updated directly to the database. Once the information is fed, both, the head teacher and the Monitor will sign to attest that the information collected is correct. It will be ensured that each school in the district will be visited at least once during a month and by a different monitor the following month to ensure transparency in the data collection process.
