The West African Examinations Council (WAEC) has set a new landmark achievement with the official launching of the council’s educational statistics (EDUSTAT) platform, designed to ease access to quality data and insights in the educational sector.
Patrick Areghan, head of national office at WAEC Nigeria in his address during the unveiling event held at the council’s office in Yaba-Lagos State on Wednesday, March 22, 2023 said the innovation was done to take the edge off the manual access to data by stakeholders, improve the quality of service delivery and generate more revenue for the council.
“The need for a paradigm, the need to do things differently, that was my take home from America in 2018 where this concept was conceived.
WAEC provides the biggest data in the whole world. The question is how do we mine the data? Data is a new gold, hence, we are moving from manual ways of doing things to digital.
We want to change the narratives. Let’s leave our comfort zone and explore,” he said.
The new product he said is borne out of the desire to provide stakeholders such as researchers, funding agencies, government institutions, schools administrators, and parents with a reliable platform that provides educational insights collected from multiple sources and delivered in simplified graphs, summaries, and dashboards which help them enhance their decision.
“The core benefit of the EDUSTAT by WAEC platform is access to a comprehensive Interactive web report,” he said.
According to the WAEC boss, “For many stakeholders, lack of quality data has led to inconsistencies and offered multiple data copies in education.
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For others, incorrect data and the absence of analytics have led to false facts resulting in bad decisions making and loss of revenue in some cases.
WAEC identified these issues and sought to solve the problem through its new EDUSTAT product, which addresses poor infrastructure and the manual process of assessing educational insights and statistics.”
Areghan further explained that leveraging technology WAEC Nigeria through EDUSTAT platform is poised to give users detailed data analysis, and insights to establish itself as a leading light in the educational sector and a future brand.
“As you all know, the new world is smarter and more instant. The access to statistical data analysis, its collation, interpretation and presentation cannot be different.
Businesses and organisations alike need every edge and advantage they can get to improve service delivery, thanks to the rapidly changing markets, economic uncertainties, shifting political landscape, customer focus and even the global pandemic, which has made the statistical analysis more sought-after by researchers for fact analysis and findings.,” he noted.
In addition, he said; “Education is one of the most important investments we can make as a society. It is the key to unlocking opportunity, improving our lives, and driving economic growth.
However, to achieve the best outcomes for our students, we need to be able to measure and analyse educational data effectively. This is where the EDUSTAT platform comes in.
This new platform seeks to change views about data analysis by providing users with easy-to-use tools to analyse and visualise data. It offers a wide range of features that will benefit our users.
For government agencies, it provides detailed statistics on student enrolment, graduation rates, and academic performance at various levels of government. This information will help policymakers make data-driven decisions about education policy, funding, and programme design.”
Opawole Akintunde, product manager at Sidmach Technologies Limited, who demonstrated how the platform works said that it can be accessed from anywhere in the world via uniform resource locators (URL) on any app.
Besides, he said it is very interactive, and can be downloaded as pdf, document, and/or in any other format.
“EDUSTAT platform gives you fluidity to access information anywhere and anytime,” he said.
Akintunde moreover reiterated that EDUSTAT platform offers detailed and smart statistical insights into the education and assessment dynamics, using historical and current data to provide detailed intelligence for stakeholders across the globe in a smart and easily accessible manner.
“Educators can get immediate feedback on how their students are performing, enabling them to adjust their teaching strategies as needed,” he said.
Additionally, he said; “The platform is designed to be user-friendly and customisable, allowing educators to tailor it to their specific needs and preference.
“The platform provides researchers with a comprehensive and intuitive way to track and analyse educational statistics. It is designed to be accessible to educators at all levels, from classroom teachers to school administrators and policymakers.
With this platform, you can easily track student progress, identify areas of weakness, and make data-driven decisions to improve outcomes for all students.”
Sidmach Technologies Limited, a cutting edge software development expertise firm in Nigeria is a principal partner with WAEC in building the EDUSTAT statistical platform.
