Indicators of Educational Progress - a Markov Chain Approach Applied to Swaziland

This short article analyses the demand for and the use of educational indicators with reference to Swaziland. The data requirements are considered as well as the policy implications of establishing a fixed series, and an educational input-output table is constructed in an attempt to derive an all-embracing set of indicators. The Markov model presented here was initially created in order to help forecast what might happen to the Swaziland education system rather than to describe it. As the discussion of the data requirements below suggests, however, this can be considered a fortunate birth.