KP to conduct out-of-school children survey from next year

The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Department of Elementary and Secondary Education started training of field staff for Census for out-of-school children across the province to begin from next year. This was shared by Muhammad Ayyaz, Assistant Director and focal person for household survey ESED). The project is planned to cover 4 million households to gather requisite data of children up to the age of 17 years in all districts of the province.
The survey will measure numbers and locations of out of school children and type and level of schools of the enrolled children, along with reasons leading to non-attendance of school. The census data will help the E&SED to make effective plans to ensure enrolment and quality of education of out of school children.
According to the estimates of the education department, the province has a population of 4.9 million children between the age of five and nine. The government intends to collect data from government schools, private schools and madrassas to ascertain the number of out-of-school children. Services of a local firm Institute of Social and Policy Sciences (I-SAPS) have been engaged for provision of technical services for the designing, planning, data analysis and report writing of the OOSC Survey. All other tasks ranging from printing of questionnaires, lists, maps and other materials to logistic arrangements for the trainings as well as engagement of staff for field data collection and field monitoring will be carried out by E&SED.
UNICEF and Bureau of Statistics BoS have also been engaged to support the Department in mobilization and training of OOSC Survey Field Staff. DEOs (male) will lead the process at district level. 40,000 primary school teachers will be engaged as Enumerators (100Household/Teacher) and 7,500 Teachers as Supervisors (500 Households / Supervisor).