SED seeks enrollment, retention of 13m students

Subject likely to be primary focus of CEO Conference on April 2

LAHORE: The Punjab School Education Department (SED) has set the target for enrollment and retention at more than 13 million for the academic year 2018-19. At the same time, meeting the target will be the prime agenda item for the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Conference to be held on April 2.

According to a letter issued by the SED to District Education Authorities CEOs of all 36 districts in Punjab, the department had set district and grade-wise enrolment and retention targets of 13,551,373 from Katchi to Grade-12 for the academic session of 2018-19. It also said that the campaign would be initiated on April 2, whereas public representatives, deputy commissioners and CEOs (DEA) would inaugurate the campaign in their respective districts and divisions.

It defined ‘participation rate as the total number of children from to five to nine years old in schools as a percentage of the total population” in the same age demographic. This means that transfer from public to private schools and vice versa does not affect the participation rate”.



The letter said that the department aims to achieve 95% participation of children of aged between five and nine years with 100% retention under the Parho Punjab Barho Punjab Programme. For this, the letter directs that banners be placed at prominent places and head teachers would be responsible to enroll school-going children (3+ years).

It further said that CEOs would be responsible to notify catchment areas of each school and a door-to-door survey of children would be conducted. “Data of children may be reconciled with birth data of the union council/census data 2017. The performance of each CEO will be monitored against these targets on a monthly basis,” the letter read. It added that CEOs must ensure that targets are broken down and assigned to areas with an out-of-school population.

The CEOs conference would also discuss, according to the agenda, establishment of satellite schools, attendance of 100% students on the School Information System (SIS). At the same time, the Punjab Information Technology Board (PITB) would also give a briefing about SIS.

Other agenda items include progress on complaint resolution through the SED Hotline and status of action taken on complaints. The department also sought a progress report on the enrollment plans for 10 districts it had deemed high priority. These include Rahim Yar Khan, Dera Ghazi Khan, Rajanpur, Muzaffargarh, Multan, Bahawalnagar, Faisalabad, Lahore, Bahawalpur and Khanewal.

Other agenda items lists progress of induction training for newly-recruited educators and AEOs, transfer policy discussion, functioning of Public School Support Programme under Punjab Education Foundation (PEF), functioning of computer and science labs in schools, provision of administrative approvals of schemes in the Annual Development Programme (ADP) of 2017-18, progress on utilization of non-salary budget (NSB), progress on result compilation for exams held under the Punjab Examination Commission (PEC), progress of Zawar-e-Taleem programme in 16 districts, issuance of Khidmat Cards to the children of brick kiln workers, establishment of rooms for the Early Childhood Education (ECE), action taken on real time monitoring observations, progress on promotions cases, implementations of security measures as identified in the audit of A and A+ category public and private schools and implementation of SOPs in anti-dengue campaign.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 31^st, 2018.