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67. Under SESIP and SICT initiatives, there is a plan to install school census
database software at the district level and one staff will be assigned to operate and
update school census forms annually. However, all these activities have not been
operationalised yet.

Non-formal education

68. The Bureau of Non-Formal Education was established in April 2005. Data
compilation is being done by the bureau.

69. One of the emerging areas in EMIS and one which most of the education
ministries in the region are paying attention to currently is the development of
Geographical Information System (GIS). It is a useful application for school mapping
and spatial analysis of education data which are essential for educational planning and
management. The ongoing decentralisation process in Bangladesh has as one of its
objectives an equalization of schooling opportunities for all citizens by ensuring that the
supply of educational services adequately matches the demand in every corner of the
country. In order to meet this challenge, micro-planning exercises require quick visual
summaries of demand and supply gaps that enable policymakers with less exposure to
statistics to make faster and consistent policy choices. The better way of creating such
visual summaries is school-mapping based on Geographical Information Systems linked
to school census database. BANBEIS has set up a GIS school mapping system under
the EMIS project funded by UNDP since 1999. It covers 97 percent of post-primary
institutions. BANBEIS is now supplying GIS information maps through spatial analysis
of data for the establishment of new institutions as required by the MOE and different
education boards. For the primary education level, under IDEAL project funded by
UNICEF, Local Government Engineering Division (LGED) carried out a school mapping
project for 29 districts in 2003-4 and the result was handed over to the DPE. For the rest
of the country (35 districts), it will be completed in 2005-2006 under PEDP II
programme.

70. The shortage of staff, along with weak capability especially in analytical skill,
is the main issue in terms of human resources in EMIS units of both ministries. At the
central level, they are under-resourced at the professional level to fulfil the broader
institutional mandate described earlier. Furthermore, though analysis and research are
the integral parts of the mandate of the statistics units, there is no evidence of the use of
statistical analysis application package as well as research activities to produce the
policy-oriented analysis. This demonstrates that the main function of the statistics units
is to produce a traditional statistical summary (yearbook). It is no longer possible these
days for a statistics unit to enhance its productivity without having proper analytical skill
and use of statistical software. Therefore, further training and capacity building activities
are to be energized to develop the analytical skill in the areas of statistics, as well as in
I.T. such as Internet, database application, spatial analysis, etc.

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