This week, more than twenty teachers attended the first of three training sessions on the new Anguilla Education Management Information System (Anguilla EMIS). The training was held on Monday 15th January 2024 at Orealia Kelly Primary School (OKPS). The next two sessions will occur on the final Mondays in January.
The Anguilla EMIS training was conducted by the team from the Education Planning Unit in the Ministry of Social Development and Education which is headed by Mrs. Dawn Reid. The lead trainer was Ms Mmelona L. Hughes, the Anguilla EMIS System Administrator. She was assisted by Ms Shauna Richardson, graduate certificated teacher who heads the Mathematics Department at the ALHCS and TVET Coordinator, Mr Feliciano James. Both Mr James and Ms Richardson would have also participated in the Train the Trainers sessions in September 2023.
The roll out of the Anguilla EMIS project continued this week with teacher training focused on the ‘Personal Module’ in the EMIS. The next session for teachers at OKPS will target the ‘Institutional Module’. Together, these comprise the main dimensions of the Anguilla EMIS that teachers will need to utilize for administrative purposes. These modules will systematise data collection and facilitate information sharing and administration for individual teachers and schools for practical everyday activities such as taking class attendance or verifying personal files. At the Department and Ministry level, this data will inform the development of policy and guide planning for Anguilla’s education system.
The Anguilla EMIS will also include a unified E-Learning Platform for teaching and learning across all schools on Anguilla. OKPS was selected as the pilot school for the initial roll out of the Anguilla EMIS, in part due to the pre-existing level of technology integration at that school due to Project Inspire. Project Inspire has equipped every student and teacher with a device, installed smartboards in classrooms and improved wifi capability, use of software, provision of IT support and professional development for educators. Project Inspire is a collaborative project of The Anguilla Initiative and the Department of Education as well as other key donors including the Government of Anguilla, APANY, Lenovo, Absolute Software and the Richard M. Schulze Family Foundation.
The Anguilla EMIS project builds on the tech-ready resiliency that the Ministry of Social Development and Education is establishing for Anguilla’s educational infrastructure and for students’ success. In addition to the current teacher training, other important Anguilla EMIS related activities occurring throughout January 2024 include student EMIS training sessions during IT classes, an OKPS Parents-Teachers meeting on Thursday 18th January at 4:30PM, radio interviews on Friday 19th January at 9:15 AM on Klass FM and 10:30 AM on Radio Anguilla, the launch of the Anguilla EMIS jingle (recorded by Anguilla’s own, Roxanne ‘Roxy’ Webster) and an EMIS Photo-Day for OKPS students for issue of the first official Student ID National Cards.
Anguilla EMIS was funded by the European Union and is a collaboration between the Anguilla Ministry of Social Development and Education and the Resilience, Sustainable Energy, Biodiversity, and Marine Biology (RESEMBID) Programme which supports sustainable human development efforts in the 12 Caribbean Overseas Countries and Territories (OCTs), including Anguilla.
