Empowering school leaders to improve school management and monitor performance

Working with education leaders for the future of Timor-Leste

Eskola is making significant strides in improving education in Timor-Leste through its focus on data-driven decision-making, performance monitoring, communication, and community building. This comprehensive approach is yielding tangible results, leading to better educational outcomes for students across the country.

By providing school leaders and ministry officials with the tools to make informed decisions about school management and teaching practices, Eskola is enabling more effective strategies to enhance student learning. Through its monitoring of school performance, Eskola helps identify areas for improvement, ensuring that resources are allocated efficiently.

One of Eskola's key strengths is its ability to facilitate communication of results, fostering a culture of accountability among students, parents, and teachers. This transparency not only encourages stakeholders to take actions that can improve outcomes but also builds trust and support for education initiatives.

Eskola's focus on building communities of practice among educators is also driving positive change. By sharing best practices and learning from each other, educators are improving their teaching methods, ultimately leading to better student outcomes.

Research shows that school management plays a crucial role in shaping not only children's academic achievements but also their overall wellbeing. There is also mounting evidence that strong and effective school leadership enhances educational outcomes, especially in low- and middle-income countries.

Even small improvements in school management can yield substantial benefits, particularly when programs are tailored to suit specific contexts and target the most disadvantaged schools.

Collecting meaningful data to inform change

Eskola is an online platform accessed using a tablet-based application. The app allows principals and Ministry officials to gather important evidence to inform change through classroom observation reports, peer learning activities, and numeracy and literacy exam results. This information, accessible via simple dashboards, monitors progress against agreed criteria and tracks ongoing performance.

This data is used to improve processes and teaching practices at the school level. At the regional level, it informs broader education policy-making and sector improvements.

Better communication and information sharing

Eskola’s chat feature enables two-way communication and reporting between principals at different schools and between principals and Ministry staff.

Eskola is also used to collect effective data about the program’s impact and meaningfully display it for Ministry officials, driving better insights and service delivery. It has an easy-to-use administrators’ site where managers from the Ministry can add or delete users, set privileges, and do much more.

From this, stronger communities of practice among principals have emerged, furthering the leaders’ professional development by sharing information, resources and policy documents.

Teachers benefit from receiving communication and updates from leadership, including prompts for monthly inspections and notifications based on triggers such as a missing report or student results.

Eskola keeps it low-cost and simple

Thanks to an agreement with a local telecommunications operator, users can

access Eskola without phone credit. This arrangement saves nearly US $30,000 a year in communication costs alone. Through it, users can download resources and use all other features of Eskola at no personal cost.