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EDUCATION EXTERNAL REQUESTS

AND

COMPARISON WITH THE DATA CENTRE

Summary and key findings

Reported by Pascale, Helene and Wendy

March 2012

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Objectives of this summary This summary is an analysis of the external requests received in 2011 via the official e-mail dedicated to external requests and/or addressed directly to the staff. The UIS Data Centre provides the most updated data and indicators to the data users. Still, the opportunity is still offered to users to send specific data requests through the official channel: datarequests@unesco.org. In order to better know the data users, their specific interests and meet their data needs, the external requests group was mandated by its management team to:

Describe profile of external requesters

Identify their main interests

(levels of education, topics, regions/countries etc.)

Take lessons from the analysis

to feed on improvement to the UIS Data Centre.

The analysis of these external requests is closely linked to the data centre. While writing to us, some data users provide detailed and first hand feedback regarding the data centre (difficulty to access some data, data/topic not available, most wanted data, regions, origin of visitors etc.). Furthermore, the statistics/feedback received on the data centre, such as most frequented tables or pages, confirm the main results of this analysis, as presented later on.

This yearly summary report aims as well to monitor the volume and nature of external requests over time. Note that 248 requests were received in 2011 through the channel datarequests@unesco.org . Many other requests however have been received through other ways: sent directly to staff, back and forth requests by the same requesters etc.

For further questions, please contact:

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The external requests: a detailed and first hand feedback and

information on the data centre’s users.

A. Profile of data users Where are they from?

The vast majority of the requests come from North America and Western Europe

4 out of 5 data requests are from Western Europe (41%) and North

America (37%). In order of importance, the countries are the United States, United Kingdom, France and Germany.

This result is furthermore corroborated by the analysis of the visits/hits

on the UIS website where the 5 top visitors are by far, the USA, followed by Canada, France, Spain and Germany

The rest of the world only represents about 20% of the external data

requests The very low proportion of requests coming from the other region

deserves further investigation and actions. It may indicate a lack of

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visibility regarding UIS in these regions. The staff of these regions should be informed of this result and consider specific steps.

Who are the data requesters?

Most of the requesters are researchers from Private sectors and students

Over 60% of all requesters are Teachers/Researchers (36%) or

Students (29%).

Researchers are mainly from the private sector such as consulting and marketing firms.

Students are studying in Undergraduate, Master and Ph.D. programmes

from various fields of education.

UN agencies such as WHO, UNPD, UNICEF, UNSD still go through the formal external request channel to request data and information.

Data users from Governments, Ministries and National Statistical Offices

are generally interested in methodological explanations of indicators and figures, as well as outbound mobile student statistics.

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B. Main interests of the data users (regions, level of education, topics and years

(historical data or recent years)) What are the most frequently asked regions?

The vast majority of requests concern global data or a combination of regions

More than 65% of requests are for global data or combination of regions.

Then the requests are almost equally distributed among 3 regions: North America and Western Europe, sub-Saharan Africa, and East Asia and Pacific.

Within regions, UK and USA in North America and Western Europe, Mali and South Africa, Indonesia, Japan and China in East Asia are the most frequently asked countries.

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What are the main themes of interests?

Statistics on tertiary education attract the highest interest from requesters, as far as external requests are concerned.

About 30% of requests ask specifically for tertiary data and the requests

regarding this level are actually exceeding those of all other levels combined (28%).

Definition and calculation method of indicators, interpretation of figures

are recurrently requested by users (18%).

Increasing demand of literacy data (12%)

*Other statistics: education related but not collected by UIS. For example, number of central government staff working on education, earning data by education level, statistics on linguistics, etc.

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Frequently asked indicators by order of importance:

More detailed list of the requested indicators by theme is presented at the end of the report.

Statistics from Google Analytic on Data Centre How far the findings of the external requests are correlated to those concerning the data centre?

The surprising high frequentation of the page “Country profiles”

page but overall the same main topics of interests in the data centre. The analysis of the most visited web pages in the data centre allowed us to draw some conclusions related to the most “hot topics”. As far as data centre is concerned, 3 pages come out as the main visited pages :

Customize tables: around 17,000 visits per month (unique page view) Predefined tables : 11,000 hits per month (unique page view) The page “Country profiles”: 8000 visitors (unique page view)

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The first two results were predictable as the data user is entering the data centre and very likely to access the data. The high frequency of hits on country profile was rather unexpected and should lead us to give more attention to this page. The 2 most consulted countries of country profiles are by far India and China. Nevertheless, the comparison with the main topics of interest concerning the data centre show that overall, it is the same top topics of interests than with the external requests we receive. Please see below the details of the visits (or traffic) of the data centre and some key figures regarding the UIS website.

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…And the top 10 topics in terms of visits/hits in the website all

related to education Figure 6. Top 10 visited UIS website page (2012 February)

Rank Top website pages Unique page view

1 Data Centre: Build table 17,439

2 Data Centre: Predefined tables 11,403

3 Publications 13,363

4 Education 10,468

5 ISCED 7,602

6 UIS - Glossary 6,123

7 Fact Sheets 4,275 8 Global Education Digest 2011 2,783

9 Higher Education 2,781

10 Literacy 2,499

11 ISCED 1997 mappings 2,298

C. Topics not available on UIS website

As mentioned, the external requests provide interesting feedback on the data centre. Missing information on topics, data or years not available or any difficulty the user is encountering are mentioned. Among the 248 requests, some requests ask data or information that are not collected by UIS. More specifically, the following topics (see below) are often asked and answers are not available. For some data however, data might be available but not displayed in the data centre for now.

Data on new education domains: Participation in adult education, non-formal education programmes, special education

Quality of education: class size, classroom/teacher ratio, number of teaching hours for UIS countries (available only for some specific regions)

Statistics on institutions: 1. Number of institutions (collected by the UIS but not presented

because of quality issue)

2. List of tertiary institutions

3. Accreditation on tertiary institutions

Disaggregated data

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1. Sub-national data (disaggregation by geographical zone, by type of institutions religious/secular)

2. Data by sub-level (enrolments, graduates by sub-level fields of study)

Historical data on educational attainment, education finance (available but not presented yet)

More detailed explanation of indicators, such as survival rate, school life expectancy (tools and explanations available but not presented yet)

School attendance, distance of school, any information rather provided by household surveys than by administrative sources.

Excel version of GED statistical tables (available but not displayed).

Actions to take by EIDA staff:

3 actions to take : promote, promote and promote (the data centre)

Promote our website as often as possible by directing the person to a specific section of the UIS website. For example, if there is a question on mobile students, we can provide the link to the ‘Higher education’ section.

Add one or 2 sentences regarding the website while writing to our respondents. In particular, the staff working with other regions than North America and Western Europe should inform and encourage the use of our website among their regional contacts.

Discuss/ sensitize the regional field staff to inform them about the very few visitors from their regions. Ask them to promote the data centre for any contact with respondents (regular contacts, missions, workshop, conferences)

Add a counter for the predefined tables in order to better monitor the visits.

Promote our publications. If relevant, direct the person to past GED or EFA GMR and provide short link.

GED 2011: Secondary education GED 2010: Gender GED 2009: Tertiary GED 2008: Inside the UIS, how we collect data etc.

GMR 2011: Conflict and education GMR 2010: Marginalization GMR 2009: Governance GMR 2007: Early childhood GMR 2006: Literacy

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Make accessible to users any available data/tools that are requested but may not be displayed in the data centre at the moment. For instance, the indicator calculation tools such as cohort analysis model, school life expectancy calculation template have often been requested but they are not online yet but we can send them the tools.

If question about Data Centre, provide link to Data Centre user guide

Encourage colleagues to record requests received directly in order to have comprehensive information on education data users

When possible, provide short names instead of long complicated URL for direct access:

Tertiary: www.uis.unesco.org/Education/Pages/tertiary-education GED: http://www.uis.unesco.org/publications/ged2011 ISCED: www.uis.unesco.org/ISCED ISCED mappings: www.uis.unesco.org/publications/iscedmaps

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Annexe:

Additional details on requested indicators by theme:

Tertiary statistics:

1. Statistics on international students/mobility indicators (28%): number of students studying abroad, number of inbound and outbound students, number of foreign students in host country, destination countries of study, historical data on foreign students statistics

2. Enrolment and graduates by field of study (24%): enrolment/graduates in science, information technology, engineering, business, by sub-level field classification in ISCED

3. Enrolment and graduates (22%): by country, by university, private enrolment, historical tertiary data

4. Statistics on institutions (15%): number of universities/institutions/establishments/private universities by country, by region, worldwide, ranking of tertiary institutions, UNESCO ranking criteria for universities/medical universities, top universities in Business Administration, etc.

5. Teaching staff in tertiary (4%)

6. Other (8%): micro data on tertiary, how many horticulture graduates find job and work in the world, compare education achieved in different universities, contact data for Educational establishments

Education statistics (pre-primary to post-secondary & Cross levels)

1. Participation (48%): Enrolment, GER, NER, private enrolment, by level, regularly demands for historical data back to 1960 or 1970

2. Overall education statistics by region/district (8%)

3. Graduates and completion (8%): by level, in lower and upper secondary, upper secondary completion rate

4. Number of schools by ISCED level, in specific country or region (7%)

5. Entrance age and duration (6%)

6. Education hours/instruction time (6%)

7. SLE/average year of education by country (4%)

8. Statistics on children with disabilities (4%): e.g. out-of-school children with disabilities, number of students with disabilities

9. Teachers (teaching staff, teacher projection) (3%)

10. Other (6%): information on Survey of Primary Schools, GIR/NIR, dropout rate, etc.

Methodology and ISCED

1. Definition of indicator/calculation methodology/explanation on figures (57%) a. Definition of school life expectancy/expected years of schooling;

calculation methodology on how SLE is calculated. b. Definition of survival rate, explanation on survival rate method of

calculation, cohort analysis model. c. Explanation on GER, NER, GPI d. Definition on NER /net attendance rate, GIR/NIR

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e. Clarification on different figures between UIS and other sources data (national sources, WDI data)

2. ISCED (32%) a. ISCED mappings for country b. Classification of programme, university, training license, non-formal

education

3. Other (11%): information on UIS data collection, glossary for tertiary education, etc.

Literacy/Education attainment:

1. Adult/youth literacy rate, literacy data by country, by urban/rural, by income level (52%)

2. Education attainment (34%) a. Education attainment data by country, region; b. Historical data from 1970 onwards; c. Percentage of population by educational attainment, age 15+, total,

completed tertiary; percentage of adult population with college degrees; the number of people with PhD

3. Other (14%): projections, literacy assessment, etc.

Education finance:

1. Public/private/total expenditure on education as percentage of GDP

2. Expenditure data (by ISCED level, historical data)

3. Unit cost data (e.g. expenditure per pupil in primary and secondary)

4. Expenditure on school supplies, education administration