UIS-AIMS Unit: What are we aiming for?
Why are children not in school? What groups have been left out of our educational systems? Who should be targeted as a priority for attaining the goals of EFA? For the respective priority groups, what are the conditions that must be taken into consideration in the design of a cost-effective delivery system? These are some of the fundamental questions that national policymakers need to answer to make further progress toward realizing the EFA goals.
The Assessment, Information Systems, Monitoring and Statistics Unit (AIMS) is the programme unit of the Asia-Pacific Office of the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) Regional Advisor, established in 2003. Aside from its regional representation and liaison functions, its main focus is the development of capacity of the Member States’ national statistical information systems for policy formulation, planning, monitoring, evaluation and assessment, in areas of UNESCO mandate.
The UIS-AIMS team, consisting of professional specialists, provides technical assistance and advisory services; facilitates national teams to conduct systems diagnosis and develop solutions, procedures and tools as well as conducts training of trainers; all with the aim of building nationally self-sustainable institutional capacity in the Member States. The UIS has also appointed Cluster Advisors in New Delhi and Apia.
UIS-AIMS collaborates closely with the UNESCO regional and field offices and other development agencies. With the Regional Bureau for Education, UIS-AIMS is responsible for convening the UN Thematic Working Group on EFA and the National EFA Coordinators of the East and Southeast Asia; and provides technical support services to other sub-regions of Asia and the Pacific.
Regional Strategies
UIS-AIMS functions in the following modes:
- providing advisory services and technical assistance by professional staff;
- organizing sub-regional and regional workshops on particular topics and themes of concern;
- networking regional national counterparts in the areas of planning, systems management and statistics in an effort to build collective and national capacity to better produce and use education statistics;
- providing intellectual input through participation in a range of interagency working groups, Member State initiatives, and UNESCO conferences and meetings;
- promoting exchanges of information and experiences through seminars, meetings; and
- disseminating information on best practices, resources, events, and opportunities throughout the network, and encouraging direct communication and linkages between experts and institutions in the network.