An Educational Management Information System (EMIS) is an institutional service unit producing, managing, and disserminating educational data and information, usually within national Ministry or Department of Education. An EMIS is a repository for data collection, processing, analyzing and reporting of educational information including schools, students, teachers and staff. The EMIS information is used by Ministries of Education, NGOs, researchers, donors and other education stakeholders for research; policy and planning; monitoring and evaluation; and decision making. EMIS information is specifically used to create indicators that monitor the performance of an education system and to manage the distribution and allocation of educational resources and services.
Contents
Life cycle
The life cycle of EMIS information typically follows an annual process:
- Data Collection – survey instrument design, distribution and collection of data from schools
- Data Processing – organizing, processing, checking and cleaning of data
- Data Analysis – aggregation, calculation and interpretation of data
- Data Reporting – publication and dissemination of information
An EMIS is a key requirement for governments to monitor and evaluate their progress towards the Millennium Development Goals and Education For All targets.
Modules
While EMIS platforms vary in size, scope and capability most systems include the following standard modules:
Example
Prodigy is a web-based management system that caters multiple school location just from one platform.
A platform called OpenEMIS was conceived by UNESCO to be a royalty-free system that can be easily customized to meet the specific needs of member countries.
A commercial example of EMIS is GoSchool, a project developed in Argentina.