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Service Delivery Indicators

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Education

While the quality of a country’s education systems is determined by many factors, measuring what providers do, know and work with can help improve accountability to the households and families they intend to serve. This evidence also enables policymakers as well as teachers, principals, doctors, and hospital directors to identify key gaps in service provision and target action where it is most needed.

Measurement and transparency are key elements of social accountability, which is essential to ensure efficient use of public resources. Without consistent and accurate evidence on the quality of services, it is difficult for stakeholders, including citizens and policymakers, to assess how service providers are performing, to work towards corrective action, and ultimately to bring about improvements. Moreover, benchmarking within and across countries also helps stakeholders to form a shared understanding of what are key constraints to the delivery of quality services.

Definition of core indicators

Below, you can find brief definitions of core indicators collected for all education SDI surveys.

  • School absence rate

    Share of a maximum of 10 randomly selected teachers absent from the school during an unannounced visit.

    During the first announced visit, a maximum of ten teachers are randomly selected from the list of all teachers who are on the school roster. The whereabouts of these ten teachers are then verified in the second, unannounced, visit. Teachers found anywhere on the school premises are marked as present.

  • Classroom absence rate

    Share of teachers who are absent from the classroom during scheduled teaching hours as observed during an unannounced visit.

    The indicator is measured as the share of teachers not in the classroom at the time of an unannounced visit. The indicator is constructed in the same way as school absence rate indicator, with the exception that the numerator now is the number of teachers who are either absent from school, or present at school but absent from the classroom.

  • Time spent teaching per day

    Amount of time a teacher spends teaching during a school day in minutes.

    This indicator reflects the typical time that teachers spends teaching on an average day in minutes. It combines data from the staff roster module (used to measure absence rate), the classroom observation module, and reported teaching hours. The teaching time is adjusted for the time teachers are absent from the classroom, on average, and for the time the teacher teaches while in classrooms based on classroom observations. While inside the classroom distinction is made between teaching and non-teaching activities. Teaching is defined very broadly, including actively interacting with students, correcting or grading students’ work, asking questions, testing, using the blackboard, or having students working on a specific task, drilling or memorization. Non-teaching activities includes working on private matters, maintaining discipline in class, or doing nothing, and thus leaving students not paying attention.

  • Minimum knowledge among teachers

    Share of teachers with the minimum knowledge.

    This indicator measures teacher's knowledge and is based on mathematics and language tests covering the primary curriculum administered at the school level to all mathematics or language teachers that taught grade three in the previous year or grade four in the year the survey was conducted. It is calculated as the percentage of teachers who score more than 80 percent on the language and mathematics portion of the test. The indicator is representative of the average teacher in the universe of teachers in a given country rather than the average teacher at the average school.

     

    Teacher subject knowledge test score: This indicator measures teacher’s knowledge and it is calculated as the mean proportion of correct answers of a mathematics, language, and pedagogy tests covering the primary curriculum administered at the school level to all mathematics and language teachers that taught grade three in the previous year or grade four in the year the survey was conducted.

  • Infrastructure availability

    Unweighted average of the proportion of schools with the following available: functioning electricity and sanitation.

     

    Minimum infrastructure resources is a binary variable capturing availability of: (i) functioning toilets operationalized as being clean, private, and accessible; and (ii) has working electricity connection and sufficient light to read the blackboard from the back of the classroom.

     

    Functioning toilets: Whether the toilets were functioning was verified by the enumerators as being accessible, clean, and private (enclosed and with gender separation).

     

    Electricity: Functional availability of electricity is assessed by checking whether the electricity connection in the classroom works. The enumerator also places a printout on the board and checks (assisted by a mobile light meter) whether it was possible to read the printout from the back of the classroom.

  • Equipment availability

    Unweighted average of the proportion of schools in which there is a functioning blackboard that is visible and has chalk; and a share of students having a pen or pencil, and a notebook to write on.

     

    Equipment availability is a binary variable equal to one if (i) the randomly selected grade four classroom has a functioning blackboard and chalk, (ii) the share of pupils with pens is equal to or above 90 percent, and (iii) the share of pupils with notebooks in that classroom is equal to or above 90 percent.

     

    Functioning blackboard and chalk: The enumerator assesses if there was a functioning blackboard in the classroom, measured as whether a text written on the blackboard has sufficient contrast to be read at the back of the classroom, and whether there was chalk available to write on the blackboard.

     

    Pencils/pens and notebooks: The enumerator counts the number of pupils with pencils or pens and notebooks, respectively. By dividing each count by the number of pupils in the classroom, one can then estimate the share of pupils with pencils or pens and the share of pupils with notebooks.

  • Share of pupils with textbooks

    Number of mathematics or language books used in a grade four classroom divided by the number of pupils present in the classroom.

     

    The indicator measures, in one randomly selected grade four class, the number of pupils with the relevant textbooks (mathematic or language conditional on which randomly selected class is observed), and divided by the number of pupils in the classroom.

     

     

  • Observed pupil-teacher ratio

    Number of grade four pupils per grade four teacher.

    The indicator of teachers’ availability is measured as the number of pupils per teacher in one randomly selected grade four class at the school based on the classroom observation module.