Centralized education management information system for tracking student’s academic progress in Tanzanian secondary schools

Application of Education Management Information System for administering school academic activities is widely recognized as an essential tool of improving quality of education for sustainable development. However, in developing countries including Tanzania, most secondary schools use manual system for collecting, storing and disseminating education information. The Manual system limits schools to have accurately, timely and reliable dissemination of education information. Moreover, when parents want to monitor student’s academic progress, the manual system requires them to visit schools physically and sometimes to wait until the end of the terminal and annual examination to get student academic report. Social and economic activities are one of the factors which limit parents to monitor student’s academic progress effectively. Poor parental involvement for monitoring and tracking student’s academic progress leads to poor student academic achievement. To address the solution, the study used structured interview and questionnaires to collect data from secondary schools education stakeholder. The collected data was analyzed using Pandas Python data analysis package. Findings from the study revealed that, poor student academic achievement in Tanzanian secondary schools is being caused by poor parental involvement in monitoring and tracking student’s academic progress. However, the study developed and implemented a centralized Education Management Information System for enhancing parental involvement in monitoring and tracking student’s academic progress. The significance of this study was to enhance parental involvement for student academic achievement by improving delivery of quality education for sustainable development.