 The Kingdom is implementing free primary education and the key challenges we've had there is ensuring that the real kids are benefiting, ensuring that the kids do not drop out of school. We are coming from an era where our ME system has been largely paper based. I'm moving from an analogue phase into a digital phase so I've been wanting that for so long. So this kind of mechanism is very important for us to get up to date information to make sure that no child is left behind. As far as ME's data collection is concerned we have been helped a lot. It is our dream as UNICEF and it is also a shared dream for the Minister of Education to get this system up and running. My name is Piwa Sugati. I'm a teacher. There are a lot of good things you can get from the ME system. You have your people-to-teacher ratio there so you know how much kids each teacher is responsible for. For the admin part they can tell when the enrollment is up so you can see whether you need to get a new furniture, new chairs, a new desk or when you need to build a new classroom. We're able to track when Elena is coming from another school into our school so instead of going back to your register and entering your child manually you can just import the school's record from their previous school so there's a continuity you can check where the child is. I was one teacher who was taking it too hard when Elena had come late at school. After having captured this data we dig more. You'll find that Elena isn't obviously she or he's demotivated to come to school. He's left on an empty stomach. We have been not far to the kids when it comes to late coming. Now instead of us shouting at them when they are late we sit down have that 10 minutes personal one-on-one interview. After having checked from the data that we have honestly it's been a touching experience. So one of the key is operations within the unit is tracking individual peoples through the system tracking the free primary education because one of the key issues there is in achieving basic education. We want to see that peoples are not being pushed out of the system which for some time has been a challenge because we were not using a system that is pin-driven which meant each and every year we had to process a lot of data and this resulted in our data lagging. The pilot came at the right time. We were just a few months into the COVID and we're using a traditional system where we were sending questionnaires to schools and during the COVID it was impossible. So we thought COVID not only was a challenge to the system but was an opportunity because we saw that we could not even provide any basic data. We did not even know how many children had dropped out due to COVID, how many were in class, how many were attending and then that's why we embraced the pilot thanks to the support of UNICEF. MS is one of the programs that I am supporting the ministry to roll out this new digital system, DHS2. So we had to come up with a digital system that was going to address the issues around timeliness and of course the issues around quality of the data that the current system is producing. Again we have many available in the market. We had an expression of interest from the University of Oslo. The proposal was for DHS2 and when we looked at the proposal we really liked what we saw. We thought it was directly addressing and responding to the data needs for the Ministry of Education and the ambition that UNICEF had and that is how we engaged on DHS2. We could not just say we've developed a system and we are ready to go on scale without evidence. We needed evidence in terms of what lessons are we picking from the early stages of rolling out or implementation of the system. We worked with the consultants, UNICEF of Oslo and the Uganda HIST team which were hands-on in terms of supporting us and then we came up with the plan to pilot and we have been proven very right to say this is exactly the solution that we needed. The pilot has helped us to appreciate that. We've picked lessons and these lessons will come in handy as we roll out the system to all the schools in the country. HIST Uganda has worked together with the University of Oslo and HIST Mozambique to support the implementation of DHS2 for IMIS in Eswatini. So we've customized the data collection tools into the system. We've supported the training of both the Ministry staff as well as the regional teams and orientation of the school administrators on the system. The UNICEF team came to our school and showed us, okay, this is the system, let's do a test case. Let's upload a LENA checker information. So we came with our registers so they showed me, okay, if you want to capture a LENA, this is what you do. You do this, you do this stuff, you do this, you do this and that was it. Because the system is so simple. I don't think even if you are not tech-saving you'd have difficulties entering that or using the analytic tools on the test spot. I wasn't that good with computers but trust me, with this experience I've been equipped even more. It has helped me to just explore more when it comes to technology, not only capturing data. It's very important that we build capacity right from the central level down to the school level so that everyone at the different levels are able to use the system for their various data needs. What has been really critical for the success of the pilot in Eswatini is the buying from the ministry leadership. The entire ministry leadership has really embraced the DHSDUK education and they see it as a tool really to change the way data is being managed to inform their programming and reporting. And not only even at the ministry of education leadership but also the regional teams, the school teams, everyone has bought into this new DHSDUK for MSI. Data informs a lot of the work that we are doing as civil society during the time of COVID. There has been so many changes in terms of access to education. So if we get real-time data, we are going to be able to make those kind of campaigns that address the current gaps in terms of access to education during a specific point in time. So for instance, when we talk about girls' access to education, we will know for instance if they missed certain days in school and which mostly are those days that they missed in the schooling system and what can be done to address those challenges. Data is very important not only for UNICEF but also for the ministry and everyone working with the minister of education. I'm happy to say it is there. Right from the highest level of the ministry, the ministry is so passionate about this system and from this pilot, there is that evident commitment from everyone that we don't want to drop the ball. We want to call scale as soon as possible. But the MS is very important to the ministry because it is going to provide the ministry a number of the key indicators. Nationally, it responds to the national agenda and internationally, we respond to agenda such as the SDGs. So I think for us as civil society, this is also important data that is going to inform a whole lot of processes. We are actually bringing all partners on board that we need to have because the system is also going to rely heavily on partnerships and I think that is the whole principle of the DHS too. It cannot be one person running the whole show. We actually get better and richer when we are doing this as a collective. For a Swatini adopting DHS for education will be a great opportunity for that country to now even be part of the greater DHS community. So basically they are not left alone. It's not only in the education sector but we can apply this in so many ways. There's a lot which you can do here. At least it's endless. In decision making, instead of rushing to take again the decision, you sit down, you plan and you think I heard before taking that decision. So yeah, it's not only about technology. This is a very important system. It will answer a lot of the challenges that the ministry has faced with.