Maseru: TECHz -News Desk
In a major step toward digitizing education and improving student outcomes, UNICEF Lesotho and the Global Partnership for Education (GPE) have partnered with the Ministry of Education and Training to roll out a new Foundational Literacy and Numeracy Dashboard and Scorecards system.
Designed to replace fragmented, paper-based reporting, this digital platform will monitor early learning performance and ensure that no student falls through the cracks. The new dashboard focuses exclusively on the critical early years of schooling, tracking the academic performance of learners in Grades 1 through 3.
It evaluates student progress across four core areas: Numeracy, Sesotho, English, and Life Skills. By consolidating this data into a single, centralized system, national policymakers, district officials, and local school clusters can identify learning gaps faster than ever before. Transitioning to real-time data collection allows teachers and educational leaders to stage targeted interventions and offer additional support to struggling learners early in their academic journey.
Digital dashboards require reliable hardware and connectivity, particularly in under-resourced or remote districts. To support the operational rollout, tablets are being distributed to principals across 300 project schools and to cluster mentors, enabling seamless on-the-ground digital data collection and reporting.
To combat energy access constraints and keep devices online, solar power systems are being installed in 25 cluster learning spaces. Additionally, specialized, hands-on training is being provided to education personnel to ensure they can confidently collect, analyze, and act upon the newly available foundational learning data.
This targeted early-learning dashboard acts as a key pillar in a much larger data revolution within Lesotho’s education sector. Historically, educational data collection in the country took months, relying on temporary staff to manually verify and enter paper forms shipped from district offices. To solve this systemic bottleneck, the Ministry has also been transitioning to the Lesotho Education Management Information System, an ambitious national platform encompassing over 4,800 institutions – from early childhood centers to tertiary schools.
By prioritizing digital infrastructure, Lesotho is cutting data-processing lag times from up to nine months down to near real-time. Through this continued collaboration, UNICEF, GPE, and the Government of Lesotho are building a modernized, evidence-based education system where data directly informs teacher coaching, resource allocation, and long-term student success.
