PESHAWAR: The elementary and secondary education department has launched the first ever automated management system (AMS) for schools in order to ensure transparency and improve accountability in the public education system.

Minister of primary and secondary education Mohammad Atif inaugurated the system at the Independent Monitoring Unit (IMU) of the department, according to a statement.

On the occasion, the minister said the province was entering a new era of transparency in the education sector and that the provincial government would prove itself to be the leader in that regard.

He said since the launch of IMU in 2014 all schools in KP were being successfully monitored on key education indicators.

The IMU has been instrumental in curbing teaching and non-teaching absenteeism, identification of non-functional schools resulting in their reopening and identification of missing facilities in schools, he explained.

Mr Atif said data on the indicators had been collected over the past two years, adding there was a certain ambiguity and lack of uniformity on corrective actions taken by the district officers.

He added AMS was a step ahead of collecting data that would generate automated actions against various indicators.

Each action would be tagged against the concerned authority starting from the district education officer up to the education minister, he added.

Each authority, he said would receive details about their actions, status and progress.

Each action will have a predetermined timeline during which the authority will be required to take action, lack of which will create a red flag notification for the higher authority.

The system also allows scanned documents to be uploaded so that official evidences can substantiate each action, the minister explained.

Similarly, the system will enable monitoring of actions that in turn feeds into monitoring of the district education officer’s performance.

The system will result in uniform implementation of action across the province and will provide a central database to keep a track of all actions, the minister said, adding AMS would expectedly transform the existing paper work in which actions got delayed because of bureaucratic hurdles and tedious details and would improve the accountability in the public education system.

Published in Dawn, October 27th, 2016