The Education Management Information System (EMIS) Support project makes available reliable and timely national, county and village education statistics for the world’s newest country, the Republic of South Sudan and all 10 states. The project — which reaches 98 percent of all known schools at all education levels, covering more than 1.7 million students — prepares the national and state governments, education officials and staff to collect, understand, and use education data.

The project collaborates with the central government to create evidence-based approaches to allocating education funds to the states. Using the most current historical data and a simple graphic presentation, FHI 360 experts equip government officials to estimate operating and capital costs by simulating enrollment and calculating teacher, textbooks and classroom requirements annually. Donors also use the EMIS information to verify trends and prepare estimates for planning.

To support decentralized decision making, the project helped establish Education Planning and Budgeting units in all 10 states. The units have computers, training manuals and resource guides. Trainings in data analysis, data interpretation and policy briefs are conducted regularly. Approximately 60 planning personnel routinely support state governors.

The project draws on current, appropriate and cost-effective technology. Because South Sudan does not have national radio or television, the project provided VSAT satellite Internet capabilities to a variety of national and state level offices. The project introduced smartphones that access regional cell networks to transfer data from county and state sites and is introducing low-cost tablets to speed school-level data entry and review. Using a customized “K-Mobile” cellphone-based system, FHI 360 experts collected photographic, geopositioning and verification data for more than 2,000 schools and made the information available in Google Earth format via the Internet.