Project Implementation Report - Innovations for Monitoring Teacher and Learner Attendances - Namibia Pilot Poject

This is the final project technical report for the Innovations for Monitoring Teacher and Learner Attendance Pilot Project in Namibia. This report summaries the achievements, lessons learnt, and challenges experienced during the implementation of the pilot project for the period July 2017 and July 2018.

Teacher and learner attendance is a major challenge facing many schools in Namibia. This has been observed in SACMEQ IV study of 2013. Data from various schools implicated both teachers and learners for coming to school late, leaving early from school, teachers being in school and not attending to their lessons and doing private business during working hours. Vaguely, a teacher can be deemed absent if they fail to meet the set working hours without authorization. Teacher absenteeism can be classified as authorized or unauthorized. There are different forms of teacher absenteeism including truancy, tardiness, moonlighting, security-related, strikes, abscond and kickbacks, to mention a few; and several reasons contribute to teacher absence among them remuneration, poor working conditions, weak management , monitoring & accountability systems. However, there has been a dearth of reliable comparable information on teacher absenteeism in Africa as such it is difficult to map the scope of the challenge, illuminate the possible causes of absence and offer appropriate policy solutions. Available research is often out of date and highly aggregated rates are reported which hide the wide variations found within countries. Hence the need to identify effective and efficient models for capturing teacher and learner attendance, which can ultimately inform decision making and policy at all levels of the education value chain.