Sindh launches SEMIS to improve schools data collection

Education minister says data digitization to facilitate decision making

KARACHI:

The Sindh Education Management Information System (SEMIS), which aims to improve data collection, school profiling and planning regarding students and teachers, has been officially launched by the Provincial Education Department.

Speaking at the launch, Education and Culture Minister Syed Sardar Ali Shah said that now with one click we will have all the required data of government schools, which will facilitate decision making.

Through this system the statistics of schools, students and teachers as well as all school profiling can be easily monitored, he further said. Through this system, details of the school buildings, all the facilities and even the budget expenditure would be available in real time.

"It goes to the credit of the Sindh government that we will keep this system in public reach, so that cross verification of the figures given by us can be carried out," he added.

Briefing the ceremony, Reform Support Unit (RSU) Chief Junaid Sammo said that through the annual statistics of about 45,000 government schools of Sindh, from student-teacher ratio to budget expenditures and various indicators of school performance at the district and taluka levels, it will play a key role for better planning and decision making.

He said that the SEMIS was led by the RSU, a subsidiary of the Sindh Department of Education, while financial support was provided by the European Union and technical support was provided by UNICEF.

In addition to this, RSU Research Director Aftab Alam said that through this information system, better monitoring of the Girls Stipend Program will be possible for the students studying in the government schools through which stipends are given by the government to deserving students studying in secondary schools to reduce girls' dropout.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 18^th, 2022.