NDOE News and Updates — During the week of September 30, 2019 to October 04, 2019, a follow up training on analysis of school, student, and teacher data was held in Kathmandu, Nepal. The training was offered by National Institute for Research and Training, Nepal. Facilitator of training were officials from Education Review office, Nepal University Grant Commission and Joint Secretary for Ministry of Education. Represnting NDOE were Assistant Secretary of F&NF Education Division, Assistant Secretary for Q&E Division, Post-Secondary Administrator, Data Manager Specialist, Accreditation Specialist, STEM Specialist, Arts Specialist, Assessment Specialist and Teacher Certification Specialist. Highlighted in the workshop was the use of Statistical Products and Service Solution (SPSS) database to analyze and understand data. SPSS is a tool that is used to provide statistical information.
Analysis of School, Student and Teacher Data
Participants of the workshop learned basic concepts of using SPSS such as importing variables from other database e.g. excel into SPSS and do data coding and cleaning. Additionally, participants were given NDOE integrated data to generate tables, cross tables, bar/pie charts, histogram and normal curves. NDOE data was also used to understand the appropriate measures of central tendencies (mean, median, mode) to summarize the data calculating dispersion (standard deviation) value to understand the distribution of data. The most challenging part of using SPSS is inputting the correct data to extract all necessary information needed.
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To sum up, the focus of the workshop was to prepare NDOE specialist to do research, collect data, input in SPSS to create charts or tables to analyze, create, understand for inform decision making for the purpose of improving student performance. Above all, the training not only seen as professional development but also viewed as team work and capacity building. We had the time to be together and learn from each other as well.