Digital Attendance Application
Digital Attendance Application
Safe, efficient student tracking
Location: Somalia
Host: World Vision
Developer: C4D Lab, University of Nairobi, UNICEF, Sisitech
Investment: $30,000
Needed: $124,532 to scale the app in Somalia and integrate into the Ministry of Education’s new national digital dashboard
Digital Attendance App (DAA) tracks student attendance quickly, safely, and efficiently to support learning and school re-entry, and insight on out-of-school children.
The Challenge
The Ministry of Education currently tracks student attendance and grades on an Education Management Information System (EMIS) that requires paper and hand-based record keeping. NGOs struggle to obtain authentic information on education indicators such as enrollment, retention, and dropout rates. Teachers also lack tools that track student attendance, and parents are unaware of their child(ren)’s attendance or lack thereof. Without ease of access to this information, NGOs are unable to accurately report to donors and stakeholders on the efficacy of educational programs, retaining a margin of human-based error. By having easier and quicker access to attendance and grading information, community education committees could improve the management of local schools and better ensure retention. Additionally, access to digital school records could allow NGOs to indirectly monitor trends in child protection issues that affect school attendance, such as child labor, child marriage, recruitment by armed groups, abduction, kidnapping and FGM.
The Solution
The Digital Attendance App (DAA) is an application that tracks student attendance quickly, safely, and efficiently to support learning and school re-entry, thus providing insight on out-of-school children. The app was developed by UNICEF and students at the University of Nairobi’s C4D Lab who later formed Sisitech, a Nairobi-based global software design firm. After its successful pilot in Kenya, the DAA was implemented in Somalia’s Puntland region by RIL and World Vision. In Somalia, the pilot schools transitioned from a paper-based student attendance tracker to the Digital Attendance Application. The app is available both online and offline and is able to capture a student’s attendance record and generate immediate reports. Individual school data will be fed into the overall district/state data and can be disaggregated by the school, sex, and grades, allowing the school and World Vision to track trends in attendance. The web-based platform allows World Vision, headteachers, and local government officials to access the dashboards for planning and advocacy purposes. The goal is to transition DAA management to the Somalian government and other partners to improve attendance tracking. To fully bring the benefits of this innovation to fruition, the Ministry of Education would like to scale up the Digital Attendance Application and integrate it into its institutional framework.
The Impact
The Next Stage: Scale
As teachers and the Ministry of Education have begun using the app, their responses have been positive. Currently, the application is being used in 3 schools. The Ministry is excited to have access to a system that provides accurate data on student attendance in real-time. This technology increases their ability to monitor and better allocate resources to areas of need. Teachers have been eager to adopt the system as it helps reduce the burden and high margin of error in the paperwork, providing better insights for the educational environment.
Contact Us
To learn more about this innovation, please email us.