Using School Performance Data to Drive School and Education District Office Accountability and Improvement: The Case of Ghana

Abstract

This article looks at a school management tool that allows school managers and education district offices to review the performance of their schools and use the broad-based data to undertake orchestrated planning with districts planning delivery based on the needs of schools and in support of school improvement plans. The review process also allows communities to engage with their schools and hold them accountable for their performance and to steer schools to meet community expectations. A district in northern Ghana is presented as a case study. The article concludes that this generation of school-level data and its use to inform improved planning and delivery also allows districts and schools to monitor how well they are doing in promoting access for all children to school and monitoring the quality of schooling they receive. This is critical information needed to understand the dynamics of school enrolment and drop-out and to make schools more accountable. So school performance review, as practised in Ghana, allows schools to improve while becoming more accountable to their communities.