Chidimma UCHEGBU
The Federal Government on Thursday unveiled an electronic quality assurance system, Federal Education Quality Assurance Service Cloud Server – FEQAS-collect, to boost the quality of basic and secondary education delivery in the country.
Minister of State for Education, Dr. Yusuf Sununu, who formally launched the platform at a ceremony held at the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC) Digital Resource Centre Abuja, said the innovative system is designed to streamline the collection, analysis and reporting of data related to the quality of education in schools across the nation.
He noted the automation of the Federal Education Quality Assurance Service Department with the establishment of the cloud server, the Federal Ministry of Education would be better equipped to monitor, evaluate, and improve education quality assurance processes and practices across the nation.
Sununu who was represented by the Director, Information and Communication Technology (ICT), Abubakar Isa, said the cloud server would revolutionise the operations of the FEQAS Department to enable it:
“Enhance data capturing and management, streamline processes and improve efficiency, boost collaboration, networking and efficient reporting, ensure scalability and flexibility; and fortify security and data protection”.
Executive Secretary of Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC), Dr. Hamid Bobboyi, said the manual conduct of school quality assurance evaluation and reporting was fraught with many challenges including delay and human errors, hence the need to automate the system.
Bobboyi disclosed that the Commission adopted the use of digital technology for the school quality assurance evaluation activities, with a view to promoting flexibility, accuracy, timely reporting and reduction in human errors.
According to him, the progress in this direction was facilitated by the technical support the Commission received from the National Space Research and Development Agency (NASRDA), leading to the development of “UBEC Collect,” which is currently being used by Quality Assurance Officers in the Commission, State Universal Basic Education Boards (SUBEBs) and Local Government Education Authorities (LGEAS).
“I am glad to say that this innovation is helping the officers to conduct their work efficiently and provide timely feedback to school and stakeholders.
“The impact of the technological intervention in our school quality assurance evaluation encouraged us to decide to extend the facility to the Federal Quality Assurance Services (FEQAS) in the overall interest of educational development in the country,” he stated.
While stressing that the initiative would help tremendously in addressing the challenge of learning poverty in the country, Bobboyi said quality assurance evaluation in basic education is conducted to evaluate learners’ performance for improvement.
He added that the Commission places emphasis on school quality assurance evaluation as an essential process for diagnostic, assessment and remediation purposes.
Director, Quality Assurance, UBEC, Mrs. Helen Okoro, said with the launch of the initiative, both Federal Education Quality Assurance Services (FEQAS) and UBEC Quality Assurance Officers (QAOs) would now be on the same page towards achieving common goal in monitoring and evaluation of schools.
“The use of the digital Tablet in conducting school evaluation is meant to simplify the work of the field officers so that all areas of whole school evaluation are effectively covered without difficulties,” she said.
