K-P students, teachers attendance rose in Dec

Haripur DEO office-female tops scorecards for quality and access

PESHAWAR: A monthly performance review of district education officers across the province showed that the attendance of both students and teachers had increased last month while most of the officers met their targets.

The District Performance Scorecard (DPS) of district education officers (DEOs) was reviewed for December 2019, in a meeting chaired by the Elementary and Secondary Education Minister Akbar Ayub Khan along with Elementary and Secondary Education Department (ESED) Special Secretary Zareeful Manni.

Akbar said that all administrative decisions will be based on the results of DEO offices and that no relaxation will be offered to districts that continue to miss their targets or show poor performance.

He further said that it was important to focus on the second shift in schools and that the education department should immediately identify such schools where a second shift can take place so that every child can have access to education.

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The minister further called on the department to focus on the provision of education to the remote areas and tribal districts of the province.

Earlier, the meeting assessed the performance of 56 DEO Offices – including 28 men and 28 women – of the settled districts against targets set in their District Education Plans. Reports on the performance of education officials in the erstwhile Frontier Region (FR) and the Newly Merged Tribal Districts (NMTDs) was also presented. The DPS showed an improvement in children’s access to schools, evident from an improvement in the attendance rate of students in the province which rose from 79% to 82%.

District offices leading on this indicator were the Haripur DEO Office-female with 90.1%, Nowshera DEO Office-Male with 87.5% and Swabi DEO Office-female with 87.4% student attendance rate.

A significant improvement was seen in the attendance rate of teachers as well which cumulatively rose from 88% to 90%. Based on this indicator, male teachers in Nowshehra outperformed their colleagues with 92.49% attendance rate.

Additionally, the percentage of teachers who were assigned invigilation duty decreased in the province fell from 3% – August to December 18 – to just 2% during August to December 19, which proves that more teachers were available in schools to teach students.

As per the report, 84% of schools in the province have operational parent-teacher councils which hold regular monthly meetings. DEOs have resolved 93% of the complaints received on the Online Action Management System regarding teacher absences.

Another major achievement was that not only more students are coming to schools, but students are also learning better due to the quality initiatives being taken by ESED.

In this regards, results of Grade-V, Grade-VIII, Grade-X and Grade-XII examinations have shown an improvement of over 3% on average. Furthermore, literacy and numeracy assessments are now being conducted in primary schools to improve the basic literacy and numeracy skills of students there.

Professional development of teachers is another priority area for E&SED where results show a 90% participation rate for primary school teachers in the Continuous Professional Development (CPD) programme and 93% participation in the induction programme for newly-hired teachers.

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According to the scorecard, the top seven DEO Offices were the Haripur DEO Office-female with 100% score, followed by Hangu DEO Office-female with a 93.8% score, Haripur DEO Office-male 87.3%, Mansehra DEO Office-female 81.1%, Bunner DEO Office-male 79.4%, Torghar DEO Office-female 76.7% and Mansehra DEO Office-male scored 71.7%.

Further, the access scorecard showed that the Haripur DEO office-female secured the top position with a score of 92%, followed by Nowshera DEO office-male with 82%, Torghar DEO office-female with 78.1%, Charsadda and Haripur DEO offices-male with 77%, Mardan DEO office-male with 76% and Nowshehra DEO office-female with 70%. ESED Director Dr Hafiz Ibrahim, Independent Monitoring Unit Project Director Ziaul Haqq and District Education Officers (DEOs) of all the districts attended the meeting.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 17^th, 2020.