Annual education census data important for Pakistan: SDPI

Islamabad

Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI) Executive Director Dr. Abid Qaiyum Suleri has said that Pakistan’s commitment to Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) has increased importance of National Education Management Information System (NEIMS)
which needs other data bases also. 

He was addressing a seminar on ‘Effective utilisation of annual school census
data to enhance evidence-based decision-making in education sector’ jointly organised here by Alif Ailaan and SDPI.

Dr. Suleri said that lack of census data on education created difficulties in preparing and implementing education policy. 

He said that annual education census data is important, as Pakistan has opted out to commit to SDGs. 

Referring to uncertainty over holding population census, he said that increasing reliance of policy makers on the available data is a game changer. For instance, he said, Alif Ailaan maintained data on education while Benazir Income Support Programme kept data on poverty. These data sets would be setting a baseline for monitoring of SDGs. If these data sets are made available at the provincial level, the provincial governments may perform better, he said adding that easy access to data could help voters hold their representatives accountable, and all the representatives’ measure up to the expectations.  

Saadiya Razzaq from Pakistan Data Portal said that the portal users would be able to benefit from better visualisation features, graphs, GIS mapping and other analysis tools and have access to different indicators through dynamic query options and could also upload their datasets and blogs on the new website by March. 

Sharing mid-term report card, published in November 2015, Saman Naz of Alif Ailaan said the purpose of launching this analysis was to show performance of schools and its linkage to the performance of elected representatives. Minhaj ul Haque and Yasir Irfan also spoke on the occasion.