Learning from Experience

Abstract

This report learned from the experience of both Ebola and data management efforts to help inform post-Covid-19 recovery including a data architecture for a resilient education data ecosystem in Sierra Leone and elsewhere. This was built on the construction of a combined database containing Annual School Census data at the school level from 2015–2019, and at the district level from 2011–2013. Analysis of enrolment and Ebola case data highlighted the ongoing importance of geographical and economic factors in determining education access, over and above the short-term health impacts of such crises. This has also enabled a detailed consideration of the data architecture within Sierra Leone to inform ongoing stakeholder discussions in this area, as well as demonstrating the potential benefits of improved data structures for data analysis, visualisation, and use through a dashboard. This has been warmly received, with the government looking to take over ownership of the database, display the dashboard publicly, and inform ongoing policy development and implementation. Finally, key principles and step-by-step guides for replicating this work have been provided to support similar efforts in other countries which face comparable challenges to Sierra Leone in terms of both data availability and consistency, and the potential use of this data to support Covid-19 school reopening. Learning from Experience 3