Construction of Education Development Index (EDI) for north western zone in Nigeria

The use of multiple indicators of heterogeneous nature to assess the overall development of education is a complex task and its misinformed policymakers and education managers. The need for an Education Development index (EDI) that sum all indices for policymakers and education managers to make decisions in identifying areas lagging in comparison to the national average. This paper proposed the construction of EDI for the North-Western Zones of Nigeria using the Principal Component and Average methods to compare the relationship of the access, participation, teacher, and equity index. A multiple regression model is developed, and the coefficient of determination for the models is 75 percent and 78 percent for the models. The results showed that access and equity in basic education are important in explaining the ex-pected outcomes in education delivery. A significant relationship interplays between the pair of access, equity, and infra-structure in explaining expected outcome in basic education. All test of significance was at 5 percent level.