KARACHI, March 23: The department of Education and Literacy, Sindh, would conduct the annual census of schools on March 31, it is officially learnt. The major parameters of the census , involving public and private schools and colleges in the province, included number of students and teachers as well as availability of basic facilities and infrastructure.

According to sources, the Sindh Education Management Information System (Semis) has made arrangements for the collection and compilation of census data in the shortest possible time and it is likely that initial census figures would be available with it on April 1.

The last workshop pertaining to census, involving district education officers, supervisors and learning coordinator was held in Karachi on March 20. Census proformas were handed over to the participants who were briefed about the drill to be conducted on March 31.

The director of Semis, Prof Muhammad Ilyas Soomro, told Dawn that workshops had been held separately in 16 districts of the province from March 18 to 22. Data would be collected from about 45,000 primary, elementary and middle schools, besides high schools, higher secondary schools and colleges. Technical education institutes have also been included in the 13th provincial census of educational institutions.

Mr Soomro said that senior officials of the provincial education department would be monitoring the activities to ensure that the data was collected promptly and in proper shape.

As per the work plan, heads of schools and colleges have been asked to fill in the columns of the census questionnaire and record all details from the general register and other sources in their institutions as maintained on January 5.

It is learnt that the work has already been started and heads of these schools and colleges would be in a position on March 31 to hand over the questionnaire, duly filled in, to the census officials.

The concerned officials would also furnish the data, collected and compiled on a especially designed forms, to Assistant District Officers the same day. The information from ADOs would be passed on to District Education Officers who would, finally, consolidate the data of their respective districts and forward it to their focal persons for onward communication to Semis head office in Karachi, said an official close to the census exercise.

It is further learnt that the data pertaining to private educational institutions in the province would be collected in order to ascertain the exact number of enrolled students.