Sky Journal of Educational Research

Sky Journal of Educational Research Vol. 3(5), pp. 051 - 060, August, 2015
Available online http://www.skyjournals.org/SJER
ISSN 2354-4406 2015 Sky Journals

Full Length Research Paper

Development of geospatial database for the

management of secondary schools facilites using GIS
in Mubi North L.G.A of Adamawa State, Nigeria
Alfred D. Mshelia1, Godwin Bernard Muskut2 and Samuel Hyellamada Jerry1*
1

Department of Geography, Adamawa State University, Mubi, Nigeria.

Ministry of Education Yola, Inspectorate Division Mubi South L.G.A , Adamawa State, Nigeria.

Accepted 17 August, 2015

The education conditions in secondary schools are frightening with lack of school facilities, overloaded
classrooms and generally ramshackle condition of many of the school buildings. In spite of the relative
availability of data, educational data in Mubi North Local Government Area still suffers from the following
issues relating to the quality and completeness, erroneously recorded and reported data, inconsistent coding
systems for information on schools and teachers, prolonged periods between data collection and data release,
poor school record keeping. The aim of this research was to develop a Geographic Information System (GIS)
database for private and public secondary schools in the study area so as to enable effective and efficient
planning and management of these schools. The aim of the research was achieved through identification of
private and public secondary schools in the study area, mapping the secondary schools in the study area, with
some basic facilities, generating the attribute data of the public and private secondary schools and finally,
creation of Geographic Information System (GIS) database for schools. The attribute data were obtained from
schools official records/store and personal interview with the school management. A topographical map of the
study area was obtained in other to derive the base map through the digitizing process. The coordinates of
each school were obtained using a hand-held Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver to georeference the
schools on the base map. Finally, a Geographic Information System (GIS) database was created and the spatial
and attribute data encoded. The analysis was carried out using ArcView 3.2a software. The result of the
database provides the users with a sound working environment for data management and also allows efficiency
query of information needed for school management.
Key words: GIS, georeferenced, database and map re-sampling.

INTRODUCTION
Recently, information on schools locations and facilities
are among the cardinal points to be considered in
selection of schools for learning purpose, because the
prime aim of teaching and learning is to bring about in the
learner desirable changes in attitude and behavior
through critical thinking with the aid of good facilities. This
process does not take place in a vacuum but rather in an
environment structured to facilitate good learning. Stoner
(1996) described the environment as an organization with
all elements relevant to its operation which include direct

*Corresponding author.
Tel.:+2348073713122.

Email:

Samjerry455@gmail.com.

and indirect action elements. School facilities, constitute

the major components of both direct and indirect action
elements in the learning environment. Several studies
have shown that a close relationship exists between the
physical environment and the academic performance of
students. Nwagwu (1978) and Ogunsaju (1980)
maintained that the quality of education that children
receive bears direct applicability on the availability or lack
of physical facilities and overall atmosphere in which
learning takes place. The school facilities comprises all
types of structures for academic and non-academic
activities, equipment for academic and non- academic
activities, areas for sports and games, landscape, farms
and gardens including trees, roads and paths. Others are

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Sky. J. Educ. Res.

furniture, toilet facilities, lighting, storage facilities,

packing lot, security, transportation, ICT, cleaning
materials and food services.
These facilities play
significant role in the realization of the educational goals
and objectives by satisfying the physical and emotional
needs of the staff and students in a school. Knezevich
(1975) emphasized that the physical needs are met
through provision of safe structure, adequate sanitary
facilities, balanced visual environment, appropriate
thermal environment, and sufficient shelter space for
work and play. Emotional needs are met by creating
pleasant surroundings, a friendly atmosphere, and an
inspiring environment. Geographic Information System
(GIS) and Remote Sensing have been acknowledged
worldwide as an effective technology for the mapping of
schools facilities. It has expanded academic provision
services such as guidance services to students, teachers
and the community through mapped data and integration
of the schools and community information. The resultant
effect of all these changes is the need for creative and
innovative steps in the management of school facilities.
Geographic Information System is the ability to overlay
various layers of spatially referenced data, which allow
the users to determine graphically and analytically just
how structure and objects (e.g. roads, water distribution
and community zoning) interact with each other. Thus,
integrated Remote Sensing and Geographic Information
System framework greatly reduces time effort and
expenses in using geographical data. integrating all the
schools data and converting it into digital format will make
it easy and efficient to carry out analyses or simulation on
future schools location planning. In addition to this
creating the database that can be linked to features in
Geographic Information System is very significant, since
the features without details attribute cannot be used for
future analysis (Makino and Watanabe 2002).
A database system is an important computerized way
of record keeping system. It is an electronic shaving.
That is collection of computerized data and addition of
files to the database (Nyerges, 2010).
The objective of this research is to develop a strong
geospatial database of schools containing available
school facilities in Mubi North Local Government Area.

Georeferencing

MATERIALS AND METHOD

The following data were unruffled and used in the

development of the database. They are:

Coordinates of schools were gotten using Handheld GPS

(Germin 75S) and a questionnaire was distributed to the
school administration. Questionnaires comprise data
such as school name, school type, and year of
establishment, number of teaching and non-teaching
staff, and number of learners in each class (JSS 1 to JSS
3 or SSS 1 to 3). These data are advantageous for
analysis which will momentously assist in the efficient
and effective development and management of school
resources.

The political map of the study area was scan using corel
draw 12 and been exported to ilwis 3.2a were the map
was georeferenced using tie points method of
georeferencing and further exported to ArcView were the
was digitized.

Map digitizing
Digitizing is the process of transforming data from
analogue format such as paper map to digital format so
as to allow storage, manipulation, analysis and
visualization in a digital environment such as a computer
environment. For the purpose of this study, on-screen
digitizing technique was employed. Each theme/layer
was digitized so as to distinguish one theme/layer from
other layers.

Feature data class creation

In this project Arc View 3.2a software was used. A folder
was created in drive c and Geodatabase was created in
this folder that is in ArcView and was named Mubi North
Project Geodatabase and feature dataset was created in
that same Geo database and named Mubi North dataset.
Projected coordinate system was selected with the name
Minna_UTM_Zone _33, with datum name D_Minna for
the feature dataset. In this feature dataset, feature
classes were created namely, Road, Settlements,
Schools and River. For example, for each of these
feature classes, the types of features stored were
selected as follows:

School: Point Feature

Road: Line Feature
Settlement: Polygon Feature

Database design

Schools control points.

List showing names and addresses of school.
Questionnaires administered to schools within the study
area.
All the obligatory information for schools were entered
into its layers attribute table and stored for analysis. This
was done by adding required number of fields (columns)
to the table and entering the data for all the schools in
their corresponding records (rows).

Mshelia et al.

53

Table 1. Attribute Table of Entities (School, Settlement, Road and School Facilities).

SCHOOL

Field
Name
Data
type

SETTLEMENT

ROAD

Field
Name
Data
type

SCH Id

Shape

Auto
number

OLE
object

Field
Name
Data
type

Stlmt Id
OLE
object

Sch
Name
Text

Stlmt
Name
Text

Sch
Type
Text

Shape

Name_of_Rd

Autonumber

OLE
object

Text

Sch_Fclty_Id
Autonumber

Y coord

Image

Number

Number

Hotlink

Type_of_Stlmt
Text

Rd Id

SCHOOL_FACILITIES

X coord

X coord

Y coord

Number

Number

Type_of_Rd
Text

Sch_Fclty_Type
Text

Length_of_Rd
Number

Sch_Fclty_Name
Text

Source: Researchers Field Work, May, 2012.

Plotting the coordinates

The coordinates of the each schools were copied in
notepad and saved as a .txt (plain text) file format. The
coordinate used is shown in Table 1.

RESULT AND DISCUSSION

To accomplish the objective of developing geospatial
database of the whole secondary schools in the study
area as shown in Tables 2 and 3 were produced to show
the list of private and public secondary schools in the
study area with the schools absolute longitude and
latitude and detailed descriptions of each school together
with staff strength and number of students each school
has.
This relational geospatial database that was developed
for the management of secondary school facilities in the
study area is clearly shown in Tables 1 and 2.
Figure 1 reveals the conceptual database design for
management of secondary school facilities in Mubi North
Local Government Area. The entities are represented in
quadrilaterals with their corresponding attributes within
the rectangles and the relationships between the entities
are shown in diamond arrow shapes. Schools,
settlements, route and facilities are the entities used in
database design for this study.
Logical data model also referred to as data structure is
the expression of the conceptual model in a data
structure that can be implemented in a computer system.
For the purpose of this project, the relational data
structure was adopted.
The attributes for the schools were created in a
relational database structure using Microsoft Access

2003 and a unique identification code was attached to

each entity in order to link the attribute table to the
geographical objects. Thus, creating this link was made
possible using the objects ID as the main key.
Table 1 reveals the logical model depicting
relationships among entities and the attribute tables of
geographical objects as it will be arranged in the
computer system respectively. The field names and
corresponding data type used are also indicated below in
Table 1.
Tables 2 and 3 is a geospatial database table with thirty
two fields of information on all the secondary schools in
the study area. The whole information in the database
cannot be seen at a time due to the large information that
the geodatabase is made up of, but information on each
school can be retrieved with the aid of a Geographic
Information System Tool called identifier which any user
can click on the school point feature and the entire
information on that school is displayed in a box that has
identify results. The box can be enlarged in ArcView
environment to give a clear understanding of the data
that the box contains, as shown in Figure 1.
Figure 2 shows a visual display of identifier Tool
Result which was clicked on Government Junior
Secondary School (G.J.S.S.) Mijilu on the digital map of
the study area and the entire information on Mijilu was
displayed.
Geographic Information System is a powerful tool that
can be used for analysis and assessment of organization,
community or of an issue, and the planning,
implementation, and evaluation of an intervention or
initiative.
Through the use of the developed geospatial database,
the spatial pattern of all the schools in the study area can
be ascertained. Figure 3 shows the query result of

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Sky. J. Educ. Res.

Table 2. A GIS Data Base for Private and Public Secondary Schools in Mubi North L.G.A .

Source: Researchers Field Work, May, 2012.

Mshelia et al.

Table 3. A GIS Data Base for Private and Public Secondary Schools in Mubi North L.G.A .

Source: Researchers Field Work, May, 2012.

55

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Sky. J. Educ. Res.

RD TYPE

SCH
SHAPE

RD
NAME

SCH ID

RD
SHAPE

SCH
NAME

RD ID
SCH
TYPE

SCHOOL

ROAD
M

M
1

Lead to
M

Has

Lead to

SCHOOL
FACILITIES
M

M
Use

SCH
FACILITY
ID

SETTLEMENT

SCH
FACILITY
NAME
SCH
FACILITY
TYPE

STLMT
TYPE

STLMT
ID

STLMT
NAME

Figure 1. Conceptual Entity Relationship Model

Source: Researchers Field Work, May, 2013

STLMT
SHAPE

Mshelia et al.

Figure 2. Data on Mijilu Secondary School using Identifier Tool.

Source: Researchers Field Work, May, 2012.

57

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Sky. J. Educ. Res.

Figure 3. Query Result of schools with one library in map interface.

Source: Researchers Field work, May, 2012.

Mshelia et al.

59

Table 4. Query Result of schools with one Library in Geospatial database environment.

Source: Researchers Field Work, May, 2012.

Table 5. Results of queries analysis.

Theme of Query
Schools without Library
Schools without Computer Lab
Overpopulated Schools
Schools without Biology, Chem & Physics Laboratory
Schools with more than 12 Classes

schools with only one library and other query results

which are presented in Table 4.
Figure 3, is a displayed map of the study area that was
queried using the query tool in ArcView 3.2a
environment. The query was performed so as to know
secondary schools within the study area that has at least
one library. After the query analysis was performed, all

Number
30
27
19
22
16

Percentage
88.5
77.1
54.2
62.8
47

schools with library their green symbol changed to yellow

by default, as shown in Figure 3.
Figure 3 and Table 4 shows the query results of
secondary schools with one library which they appeared
in yellow color both on the map in Figure 3 and the
database in Table 4.
From Table 5, the provision of some school facilities
are inadequately distributed among the thirty five schools

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Sky. J. Educ. Res.

operating in the study area. From the assessment carried

out, the Local Education Authority (LEA) and the
Universal Basic Education (UBE) standard were adopted
that; secondary school should have standard library,
computer laboratory, chemistry, biology, and physics
laboratory. Students should not exceed 40 - 45 students
in a class (Ejieh, 2009). Query operations were
performed on the database created and the results
shows that 30 (88.5%) schools out of 35 had no library
while the remaining 4 (11.5%) had library as shown in
Table 5: out of 35 schools, 27 schools which represent
about 77.1% of the total number of schools had no
computer laboratory while 8 (22.9) schools had computer
laboratory; that 13 (38.3%) schools out of 35 schools had
biology, chemistry and physics laboratories while the
remaining 22 (61.7%) schools do not have, that there
were 16 schools in the study area that had the total
number of classes 12, while about 19 schools had less
than 12 classes.

Conclusion
The use of GIS technology in creating geospatial
database for decision support systems brings many new
capabilities and commodities to the planning process.
The study presents both geospatial and attribute
database for all the schools (Public, Private and
Missionary) in the study area with a total of thirty five (35)
schools. Adequate analysis can be made through queries
thereby enhancing decision making by policy makers and
parents/guardians.
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