An Appraisal of the Educational Statistical System of the Sudan

Abstract

Abstract The Thesis is about improvement of the current educational statistical system. It concentrates on the deficiencies and shortcomings inherent in the present system and on ways and means of their alleviation and improving their contents. A good statistical database will help education authorities to assess the well-being of the system and to pinpoint areas of weaknesses. Thus, it would help to layout policies for possible remedies and improvements. This can better be done through calculation of comparative educational indicators and by building of models that single out variables or factors that have significant effects on the progress of the educational system as a whole. Impoltant indicators are defined and ways of calculating them are shown with illustrative examples that are based on the currently existing data. Limitations of the currently available educational data rendered it unattainable to calculate other important indicators. However, the purpose of an indicator is to characterize the components of a system: how they are related and how they change overtime. Indicators are descriptive tools that do not have the ability to measure the significance of the changes that they reflect. Indicator systems, however, unlike a single indicator measure distinct components of the system and provide information about how the individual components work together to produce the overall effect. Models are more efficient means of testing real variations. While expectations from social indicators are generally modest and, hence, can not substitute for a well designed, in-depth evaluations of social programs, models do the job. They give scientifically verifiable information about the different variables that are contained in them. Data collected should cover the complex variables that compose and interfere with the educational process and that are essential elements to be included in the planned models. There are different methods of data collection that can be used to suit the planned goals. Besides full coverage which, like all censuses, is limited in scope of coverage, other means of data collection like sample surveys, experimentation and case study evaluations can be applied wherever suitable. The World Conference on Education For All of 1990 and its assessment of Sub-Saharan Africa has urged the necessity of the establishment of National Educational Statistical Information Systems NESIS in all countries of Sub-Saharan Africa. Details of the findings of that conference with-respect-to NESIS program are included in the thesis with an illustration of the experience of Zambia in applying that program. Our educational system has gone through a multiplicity of changes in size, curriculum, policies and in economic, political and

social conditions. The educational statistical system should be able to supply a wide variety of data that enables researchers to study the effect of those changes on the educational process. Examination results tell a lot about the quality of education students get and about the attainment of students from that education. Examinations usually comprise a number of components which may vary in the importance of their contribution to the final assessment of the students’ academic achievement. A weighting system is thus sometimes introduced on the examination results to give more weight to some components that are considered more effective in infonning about the educational attaimnent of a student. It is also sometimes introduced for reasons the examiners think are justified by the findings of those particular examination results. Certain weighting methods are provided and discussed in the thesis and the formulae for a scientifically verifiable weighting system is discussed in detail. But the practice in the final assessment of the Secondary School Certificate’s examination results of Sudan seems to differ from what has been originally meant by the introduction of the aforementioned weighting procedures. Those results were analyzed in detail throughout the years 1993-2001 for two components, Mathematics and English, being normally hypothesized to be the weakest areas of the students’ educational attaimnent. This comparative statistical analysis reflected that, rather than an introduction of a verifiable weighting system, the actual marks attained by the candidates were in fact seemingly adjusted to cover up the apparently weak student attainment. The true examinations results are one mean for the education system to hold itself accountable for whatever weaknesses that occur and remedy them in the best way it can afford putting in mind the known limitations of the economic conditions of the country.