KARACHI: The private school’s census 2023, launched by Sindh Government on Thursday, revealed that over 3.9 students are studying in private schools across the province.
Over 1.8 million girls and 2.1 million boys are enrolled in 11736 private schools which are also source of employment for 298,938 teaching and non-teaching staff, the census data shows.
Sindh Education and Culture Minister Syed Sardar Ali Shah unveiled the Private School Census Sindh 2023 at the Arts Council of Pakistan Karachi in the presence of Secretary School Education Ghulam Akbar Laghari, Special Secretary Ghulam Ali Birhmani, other senior officials, representatives of Private School Association, educational experts and teachers.
Syed Sardar Shah addressing the ceremony said that data collection of private schools was started from April 2022 for the first-ever census of private schools in Sindh. During the survey visits to 12809 private schools were carried out and of them, 11736 private schools were found active while 1073 schools were inactive.
According to the census, there were 1247 primary, 553 middle, 2784 elementary, 6546 secondary, 606 higher secondary and A-O level private educational institutions functioning in the province.
A number of English medium schools in Sindh was recorded at 10776 while there were 469 Urdu and 491 Sindhi medium private schools in the province, the census data shows.
The education minister while stressing the need for a data mechanism and accurate data for identification of issues and formulation of right policies said that all the discussions about education were earlier based on assumptions and estimates in the absence of authentic data and false impressions continued to flourish.
Publication of the census report helped us to know the correct data regarding schools and now we will be able to accurately estimate the number of out-of-school children in Sindh based on the census and the next step will be to work on the return of those children to schools, he vowed.
The process of registration of schools- that was stopped due to the census- was being resumed while schools being run without registration would be given an opportunity to register themselves, Shah announced and warned that no unregistered private school would be able to function in the province afterwards.
As per the private school census,10264 schools were registered in Sindh while applications for registration of 860 schools were under consideration. There are also 31 Madarsah schools in Sindh.
According to the survey, as many as 3941938 students are studying in private schools. A number of girl students is 1804333 while 2137605 boy students were also studying in private schools. The number of private school students belonging to minority communities was recorded at 166788.
The census data showed that there were 298938 employees in private schools, of them 225158 are teaching while 73780 are non-teaching staff. There are 171423 female teachers while 53735 male teachers are employed in private schools, it further added.
Secretary School Education, Ghulam Akbar Laghari, speaking at the event said that the importance of data science in the world can be estimated from the fact that the most expensive currency in the world at the moment is digital currency.
He said that data on private schools would also be published on the website of the Education department.