Pulse.ng : Education Planning: Katsina Govt to begin annual school census

By Abbas Bamalli

Stakeholders of Katsina State Education Sector have started the process of embarking on the 2022/2023 and 2023/2024 Annual School Census (ASC).

At a one-day ASC Planning Meeting in Katsina on Tuesday, the State Commissioner for Basic and Secondary Education, Hajiya Hadiza Yar’adua, said the aim was to ensure effective planning and efficient service delivery.

According to her, the meeting is to set the modalities for effective planning and implementation of the ASC, with specific reference to efficient service delivery in the generation of credible and reliable education data.

She explained that, “Globally, the provision of reliable and quality statistical information by various government agencies is the responsibility of every stakeholder within the education sector.

“This validates the initiative of Better Education Service Delivery for All (BESDA), which aims to increase equitable access for out-of-school children, improve literacy and strengthen accountability for results in basic education.

“It will also help to identify, define and measure development issues and outcomes as well as enhance effective planning, policy formulation, monitoring, measurement and evaluation of the development intervention and reform initiatives through the use of credible education data.”

Yar’adua said that the state government had taken a proactive step to address the challenges facing education data gathering, hence the need for an aggressive solution.

She said that the state government, through the support of BESDA, had provided all the Public Primary and Junior Secondary Schools in the state with tablets to ease e-data collection and digital attendance.

“This planning meeting is, therefore, aimed at sharing the experience of 2021/2022 ASC conducted in the state, discussing the work plan for the 2022/2023 and 2023/2024 ASC respectively.

“It is also aimed at building the capacity of participants for data management,” the commissioner said.

She expressed confidence that the exercise would enable the government to get an updated data set which would pave the way for the development of other plans they had in the pipeline for the sector.

She called on all participants at the meeting to be committed in order to be well positioned to implement the deliverables from the programme.

Earlier, the Executive Chairman of the State’s Universal Basic Education Board (SUBEB), Alhaji Kabir Magaji, urged the participants to ensure that all schools are reached and data is collected for both public and private schools.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that Magaji was represented by the SUBEB’s Permanent Member 1, Dr Isiyaku Ibrahim.

According to him, the purpose is to collect general information of all schools, and analyse to inform policy and decision making in the education sector at state and federal levels.

“However, as education managers, you play a vital role in providing accurate, reliable and credible data in the state, which makes Katsina state to excel in education delivery,” Magaji said.

According to him, the exercise is supported by UNICEF and the Global Partnership for Education/Nigeria Partnership for Education (GPE-NIPEP) projects.

He said that Adolescent Girls Initiative for Learning and Empowerment (AGILE) and Transforming Education Systems at States Level (TESS) projects, were now ready to give their financial and technical support for the conduct of the exercise.

Education Manager, Information System of the State Ministry of Education, Malam Muhammad Auwal-Idris, said the 2022/2023 ASC was not conducted due to some reasons.

According to him, the ASC is to develop a strategy and steps for enhancing data quality, including improving the coverage for private and public and other government extension schools.

NAN