First lady Janet Kataaha’s Ministry of Education and Sports has directed schools to collect all parents’ National Identification Numbers (NINs) as well as their mobile phone numbers.
MoES Permanent Secretary Ketty Lamaro recently wrote to all Heads of Education Institutions, including Pre-primary Schools, Primary Schools, Secondary Schools, International Schools, BTVET institutions, Tertiary Institutions and Universities, directing them to sumbit student/pupil/learner and Parent / Guardian National Identification Numbers (NINs) For Registration in the Education Management Information System (EMIS).
PS Lamaro explained that MoES is in the process of finalising the redevelopment of the Education Management Information System (EMIS) as a one-stop centre for data and management information for the Education and Sports sector. She also noted that the new EMIS system would facilitate the new continuous assessment framework under the new curriculum.
“The new EMIS has been developed as a web based scalable information system that will integrate with existing legacy systems for purposes of validating the data submitted by education institutions. The system has also been designed to pick individual learner, teacher and non-teaching staff information which will facilitate the elimination of ‘ghosts’ in the education system that have resulted into a number of inefficiencies in education and sports service delivery,” wrote Lamaro.
“Furthermore, as you are already aware, the Ministry of Education and Sports recently rolled out a revised lower secondary education curriculum. The new curriculum requires each learner to have a unique identification number that will facilitate the transmission of their marks to the relevant examination bodies under the new continuous assessment framework.
She informed schools that all pupils and students (learners) at all levels of education (Pre-primary/ ECD, Primary, secondary, Post Primary (Certificate awarding), Post Primary (Diploma awarding), Tertiary/ Universities), both government and private, will be required to present their NINs as well as those of their parents or guardians.
The PS then directed school heads to “immediately issue circulars to all parents/ guardians notifying them of this development and request them to fill out the attached form, which their children (learners) MUST submit to their head teachers at the beginning of Term II, in time for the rollout of EMIS.”
Some schools have already sent out the forms while others are yet to share them with parents and guardians. According to the form, a copy of which this reporter has seen, parents (mother and father of the learner) will be required to share their mobile phone numbers and NINs.
