Education is all about bringing about changes in the behaviour of the
individual recipient of education. Educational system of a people / nation is
said to be improving if and only it makes provision for meaningful change.
In the worlds of John Kay (2008), any change will only be successful when
the school creates the conditions under which change can take place.
Ignoring this is a major reason for many educational failure. It must be
remembered that change and improvement are not necessarily the same.
It follows that for any educational change such as the Universal Basic
Education Programme of the Federal Government to bring about
meaningful result, it must be laden with improvement engendering
mechanism such as maintenance of up to date and accurate data in
school.
In the opinion of Lawal (2007), data collection and records keeping
are two closely related processes which serve the purpose of making
correct and reliable management decisions in the key areas of planning,
implementation, evaluation and feedback. Data collection he noted is an
integral part of records management. Maintaining necessary data bank in
schools is paramount if the three issues suggested by Olubor (2003) are
properly addressed. According to Olubor (2003), education planners must
address three issues if the primary educational system is to fulfill the
central purpose for its establishment. These issues are, firstly to increase
the enrolment in schools where it is low and sustain it where it is high.
Secondly, learning should be improved so that most children who enrolled
in school actually complete the primary school. This might be difficult given
the observation by Okobiah and Okorodudu (2006), that students (or
pupils) misbehaviour are increasingly becoming of a new dimension with
the advancement of technology. This is more so, because the increase n
population has also contributed to the students increased misbehaviour
especially where adequate data are not kept in schools. They thus,
suggested that to itemize the incidence of increased misbehaviour among
students! pupils, the school should create cumulative record folder — a
composite of data collection by teachers, counsellors, administrators and
health persons (which) can provide a comprehensive picture of students
and their background when it is obtained over a period of time. The third
issues according to Olubor (2003), is that the government should provide
all school (age) children with access to schooling.