For Johnsen Chanyungunya, deputy headmaster at Masvingo Government Primary School, a digital data system has made managing the city’s largest public primary school easier.

The school once relied heavily on manual processes to manage its daily administration. This made it harder to track issues such as student dropouts, teacher allocation, and infrastructure needs.

That is changing with the revised Education Management Information System (EMIS), which allows schools to capture and validate data electronically. Since the school began using the system, Chanyungunya says it has become easier to identify needs, track learners and use reliable information to improve school management.

“We have benefited a lot since we started using the revised EMIS, as we are able to use real-time data for easier consolidation across classes and grades, creating a clear and reliable picture of institutional performance,” Chanyungunya said. “This improved data accuracy directly strengthens tracking for student enrollment, teacher allocation, and vulnerable learner dropouts.”

With more systematic data collection, school administrators can better identify learners facing economic or social challenges, as well as those experiencing persistent learning gaps. This allows the school to respond earlier and connect children with the support they need.

Reform backed by evidence

The modernization of EMIS is strengthening Zimbabwe’s ability to plan, coordinate and finance education using reliable evidence.

At schools such as Masvingo Government Primary School, the system is replacing paper-based records with standardized digital data that can be used both at the school level and by the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education (MoPSE) at district, provincial and national levels.

The data collected through EMIS includes information on student enrollment, teachers, infrastructure, teacher accommodation, and learning materials.

This gives education authorities a clearer picture of where resources are needed and helps inform allocation decisions.

Using national resources to address equity

Simon Mukuta, MoPSE’s EMIS focal person for Masvingo Province, said the system provides reliable and timely information on learners, teachers, schools and infrastructure. This enables the government to plan resources and address gaps in access, retention, and education quality.

The system also supports monitoring of national priorities, including the Education Sector Strategic Plan and National Development Strategy 2, helping authorities target interventions based on identified needs.

The revised EMIS includes data-validation formulas and is administered at the school level, allowing authorities to identify and correct errors at the source.

Mukuta said the system has reduced the time needed to capture and process data while improving its quality.

“The data processed through EMIS enhances decision making, such as on which schools to prioritize when distributing resources, ensuring equity,” Mukuta said. “The EMIS data helps us to understand the numbers to target and resources needed when distributing textbooks, as well as the number of classrooms to construct.”

For example, EMIS data helps authorities determine how many textbooks are needed and where to build new classrooms. It can also identify schools without essential facilities such as water and sanitation, allowing them to be prioritized for interventions such as borehole drilling and toilet construction.

EMIS data also informs research, policy development, and budgeting. Mukuta said the ministry submits school enrollment figures compiled through EMIS to the Ministry of Finance and Economic Development to inform annual education budgets.

This planning also helps the government determine the scale of support needed for programs such as the Basic Education Assistance Module and school meals.

“Through EMIS data, we get to understand the numbers that we are offering a service to—which is enrollment—and we get to understand those enrolled at the correct age, as anticipated in the policy,” Mukuta said. “It also helps in identifying teacher shortages and informing recruitment as well as deployment decisions, since we now have information on teacher numbers at our fingertips.”

The EMIS tool is online-based, but an Excel version has also been developed for areas where connectivity remains a challenge and data collection cannot yet be fully digitized.

Protecting vulnerable learners

Back at Masvingo Government Primary School, Tracy Marecha, teacher in charge of the infant department, said the system is also helping the school identify and support vulnerable children.

Marecha said that before the revised EMIS was introduced, it was more difficult to identify children facing challenges at home before they dropped out or transferred to another school.

“Before we started using this system, it was difficult to identify and keep records of learners who were not getting proper nutrition at home, but we are now able to assist them through our feeding program, which means that we are able to keep them in school,” she said.