Southern Africa Consortium for Monitoring Educational Quality 1998
Malawi, 1998
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MWI_1998_SACMEQ-I_v01_M
Southern Africa Consortium for Monitoring Educational Quality 1998
SACMEQ-I Project
| Name | Country code |
|---|---|
| Malawi | MWI |
Socio-Economic/Monitoring Survey [hh/sems]
The origins of the Southern and Eastern Africa Consortium for Monitoring Educational Quality (SACMEQ) date back to 1991, the year when several Ministries of Education in Eastern and Southern Africa started working closely with UNESCO's International Institute for Educational Planning (IIEP) on the implementation of integrated educational policy research and training programmes.
In 1995 these Ministries of Education formalized their collaboration by establishing a network that is widely known as SACMEQ. Fifteen Ministries are now members of SACMEQ: Botswana, Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Seychelles, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania (Mainland), Tanzania (Zanzibar), Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.
The Southern and Eastern Africa Consortium for Monitoring Educational Quality (SACMEQ) undertook three large-scale, cross-national studies of the quality of education: SACMEQ I (1995-1999, reading) with seven ministries; SACMEQ II (2000-2004, reading and mathematics) with 14 ministries; and SACMEQ III (2006-2010, reading, mathematics, and HIV and AIDS knowledge) with 15 ministries.
The Southern Africa Consortium for Monitoring Educational Quality (SACMEQ) is a consortium of Ministries of Education and Culture located in the Southern Africa subregion. This consortium works in close partnership with the International Institute for Educational Planning (IIEP). SACMEQ’s main aim is to undertake co-operative educational policy research in order to generate information that can be used by decision-makers to plan the quality of education. SACMEQ’s programme of educational policy research has four features which have optimized its contributions to the field of educational planning: (1) it provides research-based policy
advice concerning high-priority educational quality issues that have been identified by key decision-makers in Southern Africa, (2) it functions as a co-operative venture based on a strong network of Ministries of Education and Culture, (3) it combines research and training components that are linked with institutional capacity building, and its future directions are defined by participating ministries. In each participating country, a National Research Co-ordinator is responsible for implementing SACMEQ’s projects.
The SACMEQ I Project commenced in 1995 and was completed in 1999. The SACMEQ I main data collection was implemented in seven SACMEQ Ministries of Education (Kenya, Mauritius, Malawi, Namibia, Zambia, Zanzibar, and Zimbabwe). The study provided "agendas for government action" concerning: educational inputs to schools, benchmark standards for educational provision, equity in the allocation of educational resources, and the reading literacy performance of Grade 6 learners. The data collection for this project included information gathered from around 20,000 learners; 3,000 teachers; and 1,000 school principals.
This co-operative sub-regional educational research project collected data in order to guide decisionmaking in these countries with respect to questions around high priority policy issues. These included:
• What are the baseline data for selected inputs to primary schools?
• How do the conditions of primary schooling compare with the Ministry of Education and Culture’s own bench-mark standards?
• Have educational inputs to schools been allocated in an equitable fashion?
• What is the basic literacy level among pupils in upper primary school?
• Which educational inputs to primary schools have most impact on pupil reading achievement at the upper primary level?
In 1995 there were five fully active members of SACMEQ: Mauritius, Namibia, Zambia, Tanzania (Zanzibar), and Zimbabwe. These Ministries of Education and Culture participated in all phases of SACMEQ’s establishment and its initial educational policy research project. There are also four partially active members of SACMEQ: Kenya, Tanzania (Mainland), Malawi, and Swaziland. These Ministries of Education and Culture have made contributions to the preparation of the Project Plan for SACMEQ’s initial educational policy research project. Three other countries (Botswana, Lesotho, and South Africa) had observer status due to their involvement in SACMEQ related training workshops or their participation in some elements of the preparation of the first proposal for launching SACMEQ.
Sample survey data [ssd]
- Pupils
- Schools
- Teachers
Version
- v2.1: Edited, anonymous dataset for public distribution.
1998
Scope
Data was collected on pupils’ home backgrounds and their school life; classrooms, teaching practices, teachers' working conditions, and teacher housing; enrolments, school buildings and facilities, and school management.
| Topic | Vocabulary | URI |
|---|---|---|
| basic skills education [6.1] | CESSDA | http://www.nesstar.org/rdf/common |
Coverage
National coverage.
The lowest level of geographic aggregation covered by the data is province, and in some cases, metropolitan area.
The target population for SACMEQ's Initial Project was defined as "all pupils at the Grade 6 level in 1995 who were attending registered government or non-government schools". Grade 6 was chosen because it was the grade level where the basics of reading literacy were expected to have been acquired.
Producers and sponsors
| Name |
|---|
| Southern and Eastern Africa Consortium for Monitoring Educational Quality (SACMEQ) |
| Name | Role |
|---|---|
| United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization | Funding the project |
| Italian Government | Funding the project |
| Netherlands Government | Funding the project |
| Ministries of Education | Funding the project |
Sampling
A stratified two-stage sample design was used to select around 150 schools in each country. Pupils were then selected within these schools by drawing simple random samples. A more detailed explanation of the sampling process is available under the 'Sampling' section of the report provided as external resources.
In Malawi, from the defined target population, a probability sample of schools (with probability proportional to the total enrolment in Grade 6 in each school) was drawn. Twenty-five schools were sampled from five Divisions, while 30 schools were sampled from Central West Division. This resulted in a planned national sample of 155 schools and 3,100 pupils. The sample design was designed to provide an 'equivelent sample sixe' (Ross and Wilson, 1994) of 400 pupils, based on an estimated intra-class correlation (rho) for pupil reading test scores of around 0.35.
Within selected schools, a simple random sample of 20 Standard 6 pupils was drawn. The figure of 20pupils was chosen because, from practical experience it was known that increasing the number of pupils within schools above this figure would increase the accuracy of sampling by a negligible amount, but might also increase the cost of the data collection considerably. There were also concerns among the SACMEQ NRCs that conditions in many schools would not permit a valid administration of the reading rest if more than 20 pupils per school were involved.
At the first stage of sampling, schools were selected with probability proportional to the number of pupils who were members of the defined target population. To achieve this selection a 'random start-constant interval' procedute was applied (Ross, 1987). In several strata there were some schools with numbers of pupils in the defined target population that exceeded the size of the 'constant interval', and therefore each of these schools was randomly broken into smaller 'pseudo schools' before the commencement of the sampling.
At the second stage of sampling a simple random sample of 20 pupils was selected within each selected school.
In Table 2.3 of the Report (The Quality of Primary Education in Malawi - provided as external resources), it may be seen that only seven schools withdrew completely from the data collection. However, a major problem occured with the data loss at the pupil level, where only 1,983 valid pupil responses were obtained from the planned sample of 3,100 pupils. That is, around a third of the pupil data were missing.
The reasons for this extremely high level of pupil non-response were varied. However, two of the major problems were the lack of transport for data collectors, and pupil absenteeism on the day of testing. The data loss was particularly severe in the North, South East and Shire Highlands Divisions- where around 50 percent of the pupil data were missing.These levels of data loss were far larger than had been set down as part of the quality control standards for SACMEQ's initial project.
Sampling weights were used to adjust for the disproportionate allocation of the sample across regions and also to account for the loss of student data due to absenteeism on the day of the data collection.
Survey instrument
The data collection for SACMEQ's Initial Project took place in October 1995 and involved the administration of questionnaires to pupils, teachers, and school heads. The pupil questionnaire contained questions about the pupils' home backgrounds and their school life; the teacher questionnaire asked about classrooms, teaching practices, working conditions, and teacher housing; and the school head questionnaire collected information about teachers, enrolments, buildings, facilities, and management. A reading literacy test was also given to the pupils. The test was based on items that were selected after a trial-testing programme had been completed.
The SACMEQ Data Collection Instruments include the following documents:
- SACMEQ Questionnaires - which are administered to pupils, teachers, and school heads.
- SACMEQ Tests - which are administered to pupils and teachers (covering reading mathematics, and HIV-AIDS knowledge).
- Other SACMEQ Data Collection Instruments - such as take-home pupil questionnaires, school context proformas, and within-school project management documents.
Data collection
| Start | End | Cycle |
|---|---|---|
| 1998-09 | 1998-10 | Data Collection |
| 1998-12 | Second Attempt at Data Collection - Hard to reach schools |
Nine officers from the Center for Educational Research and Training (CERT) and Ministry of Education conducted the data collection. The data collection exercise was scheduled to the last two weeks. Before going to the field, letters were written to all District Education Officers in order to make them aware of the data collectors' visits to the schools within their districts. Data collectors and supervisors were trained for one day before going to the field. Two further days were dedicated to a trial-testing program in the Zomba district. Following the trial-testing in Zomba, the team met to discuss the experiences and problems that had been encountered. After clarifying everything, all data collectors left for the field. During the main testing a problem of transport occured. Only two vehicles were made available. This required splitting the team into two data collection groups, which prolonged the period of data collection. Data collection began in mid-September and ended in mid-October. Some schools could not be reached because of poor roads and bridges. This resulted in a considerable shortfall in the sample. A second attempt was made two months later (in December 1998) to collecct the data from the missing schools.
Data processing
In February 1999, the IIEP arranged a training workshop in Malawi for the data entry team and members of the SACMEQ team. Data entry then commenced and the whole exercise took three weeks. This activity was followed by six days of data cleaning which removed 'wild codes' and any major inconsistencies in the data.
Data appraisal
Details on calculation of sampling errors are available on pages 13-14 of the attached report.
Data Access
| Name | Affiliation | URL | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Director- Southern Africa Consortium for Monitoring Educational Quality (SACMEQ) | International Institute for Educational Planning - UNESCO | http://www.sacmeq.org | info@sacmeq.org |
TERMS AND CONDITIONS FOR USE OF THE SACMEQ DATA ARCHIVE
1.0 Introduction
The Southern and Eastern Africa Consortium for Monitoring Educational Quality (SACMEQ) Co-ordinating Centre (SCC http://www.sacmeq.org/_legal/accept_new?destination=training-workshops) has produced a data archive containing all information collected for SACMEQ's first three educational policy research projects (SACMEQ I, SACMEQ II, and SACMEQ III). This archive is now available online on the SACMEQ website so as to give bona fide researchers and students online access to SACMEQ data and documents.
The SACMEQ data sets have been developed at great cost and with the application of stringent quality controls. It is being made available to eligible users because it has a great potential to contribute to educational policy development beyond what has already been achieved in this respect through the reports written by the National Research Co-ordinators (NRC http://www.sacmeq.org/_legal/accept_new?destination=training-workshopss) and Deputy National Research Coordinators (NRC http://www.sacmeq.org/_legal/accept_new?destination=training-workshopss). It is expected that many researchers and students will wish to use the Data Archive for research, publications, and/or training purposes.
The Terms and Conditions serve two purposes. Firstly, they provide interested applicants with guidelines on how to access this valuable information resource. Secondly, they are intended to safeguard against the danger of users being unaware of the complexities of the data collection process and consequently arriving at misinterpretations that could lead to incorrect conclusions.
2.0 How can the user gain such access?
In order to obtain SACMEQ Data Archive for any of the SACMEQ school systems, the applicant should follow these steps:
2.1 Read and Agree to these "Terms and Conditions for the Use of the SACMEQ Data Archive."
2.2 Complete an online application form.
3.0 What rules govern the use of the SACMEQ data archive?
3.1 The Data Archive is the outcome of expensive and time-consuming activities of the staff of the represented Ministries of Education spread over many years. For this reason, the SACMEQ Ministries of Education described in the Data Archive should:
3.1.1 be notified by the SACMEQ SCC http://www.sacmeq.org/_legal/accept_new?destination=training-workshops of any request for data;
3.1.2 have an opportunity to review reports based on the data archive so as to correct any gross errors before they are published; and
3.1.3 satisfy themselves that the data have been used in such a manner that they contribute positively to the development of relevant education policies in relevant SACMEQ member countries.
3.2 It is the National Research Coordinators (NRC http://www.sacmeq.org/_legal/accept_new?destination=training-workshopss) and Deputy National Research
Coordinators (DNRCs) who have spearheaded the collection and compilation of SACMEQ data. In acknowledgment of their efforts, the applicant(s) will be required to invite the relevant country's National Research Coordinator to participate in the study associated with the use of the data. Where an individual other than the NRC http://www.sacmeq.org/_legal/accept_new?destination=training-workshops or DNRC is co-opted, the relevant NRC http://www.sacmeq.org/_legal/accept_new?destination=training-workshops and DNRC shall be given the first right of refusal.
3.3 This provision does not apply in situations where the SACMEQ Data Archive is used purely for purposes of individual academic research by a student, and where the results are not intended for publication.
3.4 All relevant NRC http://www.sacmeq.org/_legal/accept_new?destination=training-workshopss and DNRCs will be informed by the SCC http://www.sacmeq.org/_legal/accept_new?destination=training-workshops about the recipients of the Data Archive.
3.5 SACMEQ provides the SACMEQ Data Archive to applicants on the basis of the intended use stated in the application. The applicant, therefore, should not use the data for any purpose other than the one stated in the application. Should the applicant(s) wish to use the data for a purpose other than that stated in the agreement, then he/she/they must first secure the written approval of SACMEQ before he/she/they proceed to do so.
3.6 SACMEQ data are provided for the sole and exclusive use of the applicant specified in the agreement. The successful applicant should, therefore, not share the SACMEQ Data Archive with, or pass it on to, any other unauthorized person(s).
3.7 The authorized user shall take responsibility for the safe custody of the SACMEQ Data Archive and also take reasonable steps to ensure that no unauthorized persons gain access to it.
3.8 The authorized user shall give due credit to SACMEQ for providing the Data Archive by providing written acknowledgement of this in any publication emanating from their use.
3.9 As the Data Archive remains the property of the SACMEQ, no other person(s), including the successful applicants or the member Ministry, shall re-distribute or offer for sale the SACMEQ Data Archive.
3.10 All reports based on the SACMEQ Data Archive have to secure the written approval of the SCC http://www.sacmeq.org/_legal/accept_new?destination=training-workshops prior to the publication in order to confirm compliance to our terms and conditions, and also to ensure that there is no misunderstanding or misinterpretation of the data.
3.11 Once authorization has been granted to access the archive, you will see a link on the website which will take you to the Data Archive.
3.12 All relevant NRC http://www.sacmeq.org/_legal/accept_new?destination=training-workshopss will be informed by the SCC http://www.sacmeq.org/_legal/accept_new?destination=training-workshops about the recipients of the SACMEQ Data Archive.
3.13 Full acknowledgement of the source of the data (including reference to the SACMEQ Data Archive) must be given whenever the data are used.
3.14 A copy of any published article or report based on the SACMEQ Data Archive must be provided free of charge to (a) the SACMEQ Co-ordinating Centre, and (b) the Ministry(ies) of Education from whose data the report has been generated.
Southern and Eastern Africa Consortium for Monitoring Educational Quality. SACMEQ Project 1995-1998 [dataset]. Version 4. Harare: SACMEQ [producer], 2004. Paris: International Institute for Educational Planning, UNESCO [distributor], 2004.
Disclaimer and copyrights
The user of the data acknowledges that the original collector of the data, the authorized distributor of the data, and the relevant funding agency bear no responsibility for use of the data or for interpretations or inferences based upon such uses.
Copyright, Southern and Eastern Africa Consortium for Monitoring Educational Policy
Contacts
| Name | Affiliation | URL | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Director- Southern Africa Consortium for Monitoring Educational Quality | International Institute for Educational Planning - UNESCO | info@sacmeq.org | http://www.sacmeq.org |
| International Institute for Educational Planning | United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) | info@iiep.unesco.org | http://www.iiep.unesco.org |
Metadata production
DDI_MWI_1998_SACMEQ-I_v01_M_WB
| Name | Affiliation | Role |
|---|---|---|
| Development Economics Data Group | The World Bank | Documentation of the DDI |
2014-05-13
Metadata version
Version 01 (May 2014)