Revolutionizing Education: AbdulRazak’s KwaraLEARN Powers Education with Data Innovation

It is easy to think the world has all the data it could possibly need. Easy, but wrong. Education is a case in point. UNESCO’s “Spotlight on basic education completion and foundational learning in Africa” estimates that no data at all exists on the learning levels of two-thirds of African children.
As it points out: “A common obstacle preventing the alignment of a vision with a realistic target is the lack of regularly collected data of good quality on learning outcomes.”

Yet collecting data is only the beginning of the journey towards transforming learning outcomes. It must be tangible, easy to interpret, and solution driven. Recognising this, NewGlobe is working with partner governments to create an immersive visual education data experience.
But, what does that look like – the KwaraLEARN Situation Room, launched on December 14th is an excellent example of a modern solution to visualizing data. It is at the heart of the KwaraLEARN program, the Kwara State Government’s flagship initiative transforming learning outcomes across the State’s public primary schools.

The Situation Room highlights a NewGlobe software program called Spotlight, which monitors real-time data, presenting it in a way that is easy to understand and focuses on key education indicators. With this, Kwara State education officials have transparency and oversight of the ongoing transformative educational interventions in KwaraLEARN schools.

Being supported by the NewGlobe model, the program naturally collects large amounts of valuable data. With the Situation Room this is unlocked – assisting the government to make data-informed and targeted decisions that benefit learning.
A summary of Comments from HE Governor Abdulrazak Abdulrahman during the launch is that collection of data online is done in real-time, as things are happening we are collecting data – so we know how many are in school, if there are any problems in schools we are able to track it, so the people going there to solve the problem have a lot of data on their hands; they would know how many children and teachers, whether the head teacher is at school, and whether students are having learning difficulties in a subject.

Also present at the launch of the situation room was Honourable Commissioner for Education, Kwara State Saadatu Moddibo Kawu and Prof Shehu Adaramaja,

Chairman Kwara State Universal Basic Education Board
The dashboard displays the data of all KwaraLEARN primary schools with easy-to-understand data visualization, key education stakeholders in the state, such as the Governor, have access to powerful real-time analytics information on primary education in Kwara State. With the program’s pinpoint geographical features, governments can gain useful insights into what is and is not working for specific areas. For example, if a region is having issues with student attendance or retention, using the Situation Room and Spotlight software, a targeted intervention can be made based on real-time data.

The pay off, an adaptive education system that encourages learning for all.
With these innovative data collection and analysis tools, KwaraLEARN has joined the league of education transformation trail blazers in both Nigeria and Sub-Saharan Africa.

A government education system cannot be transformed unless there is data. As Jaime Saavedra, Director of World Bank Education says:“Quality learning data is essential to implement policies to recover learning losses. Many countries are flying blind. It is urgent to close the data gap.”
Kwara State is committed to aligning vision with learning outcomes, and the pioneering KwaraLEARN Situation Room helps make that reality.