Public education: Technology helping improve standards, says Saif

‘A mechanism has been introduced to monitor public schools’ performance’

LAHORE:

The government has adopted several technological tools for the uplift of education sector, Punjab Information Technology Board (PITB) Chairman Umar Saif has said.

The technology uses include digitisation of textbooks and providing these online free of charge and introduction of a mechanism to monitor public schools’ performance, Said told The Express Tribune.

“IT-based initiatives have been taken to solve numerous problems faced by education authorities. I firmly believe that technology will help bring about a positive change in the field,” he said.



He said the government was set to provide tablets carrying e-learning curricula to 50,000 students in 12,000 classrooms. He said schools would be equipped with Wi-Fi internet.

A spokesperson for the PITB said the board was providing technological solutions to help the Education Department monitor the performance of 52,695 schools, streamline its field operations and assess learning outcomes.

“Under the Department for International Development-sponsored School Reforms Roadmap, the PITB has equipped 950 field officers of the School Education Department with SIM-enabled tablets so that they can report real-time data during their monthly visits to schools.” He said the data included the teachers’ as well as students’ attendance, enrolment and availability of clean drinking water, electricity, and toilets.

“Some of the features of the tablet-based monitoring include real-time reporting with pictorial evidence, geo-tagging of sites visited and SMS alerts for schools performing below standards.  The School Education Department can now identify field officers visiting schools. More than half a million visits have been recoreded through the system. The data is available to the public for free.”

The spokesperson said the board had also developed a spot assessment application that took advantage of the tablet-PCs already given to field monitoring officers (MEAs). “During visits to public schools, the MEAs use an Android-based application to hold spot-tests of randomly selected students. As many as 543,558 students of grade-3 have been assessed so far,” he said.

He said the PITB had also developed an SMS-based platform that focused on teaching and assessment through simple questions. “An item bank of over two million ‘attempt-and-learn’ statements has been created. A teacher can initiate an assessment-for-learning (AFL) session by selecting the grade level, subject, and topic and sending an SMS at a specified short code. This initiates an interactive session for children on cell phones. The central system sends feedback to teachers,” the spokesperson said.

He said textbooks had been digitised in collaboration with the Punjab Textbook Board and the School Education Department. “Thousands of supplementary audios, videos, simulations, learning games, and self-assessment modules have been added at relevant sections of these textbooks. These textbooks and supplementary resources are available for public for free,” he said.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 28^th, 2015.