Stakeholders learn how to collect and manage data in early childhood care and education |03 October 2016

Health professionals, social workers, personnel  from the Institute of Early Childhood Development (IECD) have learnt how to collect and manage data related to early childhood care and education.

This was during a working session conducted by a consultant expert from the World Bank Lindsay Adams. Ms Adams had previously conducted a situation analysis within the health sector.

During the workshop on Friday at the Avani Barbarons hotel, she also presented the preliminary findings of the analysis.

The ambassador for Women and Children Erna Athanasius and the principal secretary for health Dr Bernard Valentin were among other guests who attended the opening session of the workshop.

The chief executive of the IECD, Shirley Choppy, said in opening remarks that accurate data collection, efficient management and timely retrieval of data for specific analytical functions is necessary in all sectors to address policy issues, to identify areas of weakness, to devise improvement strategies and to report on achievements.

“With the rapid development of early childhood care and education in Seychelles and the wide range of related services and provisions, the use of data has become an important universal tool of professional reporting and system efficiency,” she said.

Mrs Choppy explained that the need for good data management came up in 2013 after a World Bank report rated Seychelles as ‘established’ for all the policies that govern Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) except for data availability where we received a poor rating. Subsequently the IECD was entrusted with the task of ensuring that in the next five years the rating improves.

A related project was thus conceptualised and included in the ECCE 2015-16 Action Plan.

The project is being realised in collaboration with the Ministry of Health and the World Bank for expert support and necessary funding.

The aim of the project is to strengthen data collection and management   in all sectors so that they become readily available to be shared at regional and international level.

When the project is completed, an indicator framework and a procedural manual will be produced  to strengthen existing data collection systems and the quality of data collected in the health sector  based on core early childhood development internationally recognised indicators.

To start with, the project is targeting the health sector but there is the possibility for it to be carried out in other sectors.

In her address to launch the working session, the Minister for Education Macsuzy Mondon noted that availability and use of data that is viable and reliable enable more informed decision-making, effective planning and strong, decisive and strategic actions.

“In Seychelles like in many other small developing states data may be readily available from different sources but however there is the need for improvement in data quality, usability, comprehensiveness, retrieval and intelligence in order to make a real difference in the performance of organisations,” Minister Mondon stressed.

She added it has been recognised that in the ECCE domain there are currently many gaps in available information and inconsistence in the collection and reporting of data across many sectors.

Ms Adams noted that she has been impressed by many aspects of Seychelles’ early childhood development system and the national commitment for further development. But she added that early childhood years are crucial for human development thus the need for effective collection of data at this stage.

She said data are very powerful and if things do not go right for children in early childhood these can be difficult to fix later.

She added that for instance through good data one can predict which child would have most problems.

In a detailed overview she stressed on the importance of early childhood development data, how they should be collected, what to collect and measure, their purpose, what they should include and how an early childhood development data system works.