Education Management Information System (EMIS)

EMIS stands for “Education Management Information System”. In a very simple and straightforward way it may be understood as “An Information System for Managers of the Education System”

EMIS is a Tool for:

1. Data collection
2. Storage
3. Integration
4. Analysis
5. Dissemination

Specifically designed for use by planners and administrators to plan and administer education system more efficiently and effectively.

EMIS is an integrated human and computer based process for providing all the information needed to support all the activities of the education department including management, planning and decision making. 

EMIS is a Management Support Service and, it supports different users of education statistics

The main purposes of the EMIS

1. Providing information to all users to enable these users to conduct their different tasks more efficiently
2. Enabling decision-makers to take better decisions and justifying them, based on concrete information
3. Enabling planning and policy development to address objectively identified issues, set quantified targets, and realistically estimate the resources required for implementing plans and policies
4. Contributing to improving the efficiency of day-to-day operations of the education system by providing relevant and reliable information
5. Support efficient monitoring of attainment of the stated education goals, by providing complete, reliable and timely data.
6. Support planning, decision making, supervision and management.
7. Facilitate the efficient direction of resources        to the needy areas and eliminate/minimize wastage.
8. Accurate and reliable information
9. Diagnosis of weaknesses and strengths
10. Identification and Selection of priorities areas
11. Resource allocation

Role of an EMIS

1. Informing decision-makers
2. Provide analysed data relevant to the decision-making responsibilities of managers
3. Inform the managers about the problematic areas in education system
4. Provide information for managers to monitor progress towards achieving the educational goals/objectives and targets
5. Providing planning information:
   1. Identifying issues to be addressed by planners
   2. Supporting policy planning
   3. Providing general planning information
   4. Monitoring and evaluation information
6. Identify existing problems, for example
   1. Repetition
   2. Dropout
   3. Girls’ Education,
   4. Gender Disparity 
7. Predict future problems based on projections of present tendencies, e.g.
   1. Shortage of Classrooms,
   2. Shortage of Teachers
8. Providing (numeric) information pertaining to the provision of education to decision makers, planners and other internal or external users
9. Alerting managers and planners to existing or anticipated (projected) problems visible from the EMIS data
10. Providing monitoring information
11. Providing information for speeches, press releases and similar purposes to managers
12. Supporting planning with data and projections

Efficiency of EMIS Depends on

1. Timely and Reliable Production of Data and Information
2. Data Integration and Data Sharing among Departments
3. Effective Use of Data and Information for Educational Policy Decisions