Dear friends and colleagues,

A Happy New Year to you all!

We are commencing this year with a message from the SACMEQ Coordinating Centre (SCC) at the IIEP in Paris, reflecting back on events of 2009 as we plan for the way forward.  We would like to keep you informed on a regular basis about all SACMEQ events and activities at the SCC/IIEP.

As you are aware, 2009 was a very busy and productive year for SACMEQ. The SACMEQ Ministries of Education (MoE) successfully completed the complex and time intensive data cleaning cycle. Data for around 60,000 pupils, 8,000 teachers and 2,700 school heads from 2,700 schools went through seven stages of rigorous data cleaning. This included removing duplicates, resolving ID problems, fixing double-entry discrepancies between millions of records, validation checks, and resolving within and between file inconsistencies. The extraordinary complexity of the data collection in the SACMEQ III Project has demanded extensive data cleaning and validation work. In some cases data entry and cleaning has taken two years to complete. This phase is being followed by subsequent steps of data processing (merging, weighting, calibration, scoring, imputation, calculating sampling errors, computing derived variables, etc).

The leadership role played by the SCC/IIEP in accomplishing major tasks during 2009 was in large part due to the significant contributions of Prof. Kenneth Ross. Prof. Ross and the “SACMEQ team at IIEP” have been our tutors and mentors. The SACMEQ Assembly of Ministers that was held at the IIEP on 4 October 2009 honoured Prof. Ross and UNESCO Director General Mr. Koïchiro Matsuura for their outstanding contributions to SACMEQ. Prof. Ross retired from UNESCO/IIEP in October 2009, but he has NOT retired from SACMEQ!

Ms. Laura Paviot has also left the IIEP but will continue to be involved with SACMEQ. Ms. Paviot made tremendous contributions to the SACMEQ III Project research design and implementation, in particular in the area of extra tuition. We are grateful for her many contributions to SACMEQ and her willingness to continue to work with us.

All of us at the SCC/IIEP join the SACMEQ Assembly of Ministers in extending our thanks and appreciation to: (a) Prof. Ross, and the former UNESCO Director General, for their contributions to SACMEQ, and (b) the Government of the Netherlands for their long term financial support for SACMEQ research and training programmes over the past decade.

2009 was also a year in which we suffered two great losses, as two of our dear and esteemed friends and colleagues, Ms. Juliana Nzomo and Prof T. Neville Postlethwaite, passed away. We will never forget the enormous contributions they have made to SACMEQ, and their legacy will live on in our current and future work.

Finally, we invite all our SACMEQ colleagues to contribute to future editions of SACMEQ news so that we can share information about SACMEQ activities that are taking place in SACMEQ countries. You can send your contributions to:

Wishing you all the best for 2010.

Demus Makuwa (Ph.D)
Director SCC a.i. (on behalf of the entire SACMEQ Team at IIEP)

Contents:

• SACMEQ Assembly of Ministers Meeting
• UNESCO Director General’s message to the SACMEQ Ministers
• Formative Review of SACMEQ
• SACMEQ Research Medal Recipients
• Photos of the event
• Ken Ross retires from UNESCO, but not from SACMEQ
• Anna Passos, SACMEQ NRC for Mozambique, completes PhD thesis
• SACMEQ Activities in 2009
• StatPlanet v.2.1 released - Data Mapping and Visualization

SACMEQ Assembly of Ministers Meeting

On 4 October 2009, Ministers of Education, Deputy Ministers, Ambassadors, and several high-level government officials from the fifteen Ministries of Education that comprise the Southern and Eastern Africa Consortium for Monitoring Educational Quality (SACMEQ), gathered at the IIEP in Paris, for the Seventh Session of the SACMEQ Assembly of Ministers Meeting. The Director-General of UNESCO, Mr Koïchiro Matsuura, also attended the meeting.

UNESCO Director General’s message to the SACMEQ Ministers

Mr Koïchiro Matsuura stated that UNESCO was proud to partner with African Ministries of Education in this important initiative, and warmly congratulated the SACMEQ Consortium for 15 very successful years work. “SACMEQ’s evolution from a small experimental research activity conducted by UNESCO IIEP in a single country, to its current status as an international non-profit development organization, has, indeed, been truly remarkable”. He noted that this progress owed a great deal to SACMEQ’s co-operative working style, which he said was “as an excellent example of how regional groupings of countries can work with UNESCO in order to tackle problems of common interest in a fashion that facilitates a planned and systematic transfer of project ownership and management to the participating countries”.

The Director-General referred to the many positive evaluations of SACMEQ’s work over the past years, as well as the Consortium’s receipt in 2004 of the prestigious Comenius Medal in recognition of its significant contribution to educational progress.

“SACMEQ’s research and training programmes are making a tremendous contribution to efforts to raise the quality of education across Southern and Eastern Africa”, he underscored.
Looking forward, Mr Matsuura welcomed the plan to return the SACMEQ Coordinating Centre to Africa, assuring Ministers that “UNESCO will do everything possible to facilitate this, and ensure continuity in SACMEQ’s work”. The Director-General also said that UNESCO would do all it could to bring to successful fruition the SACMEQ III project, which is due to be completed in late 2010. This third research and training cycle covers some 3,000 schools across Southern and Eastern Africa.

Formative Review of SACMEQ
Following the Director-General’s intervention, Mr Kenneth Ross, Coordinator of IIEP’s Programme of Cooperation with SACMEQ, took the Ministers through the key issues of the Formative Review of SACMEQ that was commissioned by the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 2009. These key issues had been compiled by the SACMEQ Scientific Committee and related to the past, present and considerations for the future development of SACMEQ in terms of its mandate, membership and funding.

SACMEQ Research Medal Recipients

SACMEQ Research Medals are awarded on a biennial basis to persons deemed to have made major contributions to SACMEQ’s research programmes through scholarly publication and/or service to the SACMEQ research programme.

Congratulations to the following SACMEQ colleagues who received a SACMEQ Research Medal during the Assembly of Ministers Meeting:

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Ken Ross retires from UNESCO, but not from SACMEQ

As of 1 November 2009 Prof. Kenneth Ross has retired from his post at IIEP / UNESCO, but not from SACMEQ. He is now a Professorial Fellow at the University of Melbourne, and will continue to be a guide, mentor and advisor for SACMEQ.

The IIEP will miss the services of this excellent and humble international civil servant who has worked, served, taught and mentored SACMEQ National Research Teams (and others) with passion, patience, integrity, and excellence.

A number of colleagues who have passed through Ken’s tutelage over the past 15 years have risen or been promoted to higher positions in Ministries of Education, Universities, UNICEF, and other international and/or national NGO’s that are working in the southern and eastern African region.

Many other NRCs have obtained doctorate degrees using SACMEQ data or using the training that they had received through SACMEQ (For example, Dr George Moyo (Zimbabwe), Dr Joseph Chimombo (Malawi), Dr Demus Makuwa (Namibia), Dr Linda Zuze (Zambia), Dr Ana Passos (Mozambique), in addition to Massoud M Salim (Zanzibar), and Albert Byamugisha (Uganda), who will soon be completing their doctoral studies, to mention just a few). There have been scores of other colleagues who have used SACMEQ research and training resources for their Masters degrees.

The current group of SACMEQ National Research Team members are doing an excellent job and adding immense value to the work of their MoE, as evidenced by the success of the SACMEQ III Project (in addition to the other assignments that have been entrusted to them by their MoE because of their demonstrated knowledge and skills partly acquired through SACMEQ). The SACMEQ III Project is the most complex large-scale educational research project ever to be conducted in sub-Sahara Africa using state of the art scientific methods.

Ken’s exemplary contributions to capacity development and improvement of the quality of education in southern and eastern Africa spanning over 15 years of his association with SACMEQ makes him an honorary citizen of the region!! Ken has worked with Ministries of Education in the Southern and Eastern Africa region for many years. He understands our strengths, our weaknesses, and the challenges ahead. Above all, he believes in us, and in the future educational development of our region.