Sindh Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah on Thursday highlighted the need to digitize processes while inaugurating the Student Attendance Monitoring and Redressal System (SAMRS) to track the attendance of students.
SAMRS, an initiative of the school education and literacy department (SELD), has been developed under the Sindh Early Learning Enhancement Through Classroom Transformation (SELECT) project.
In a statement on X, Sindh’s information department said the initiative represented a “significant step towards greater transparency and promotion of data-driven education across the province.”
Addressing the launch ceremony in Karachi today, CM Murad highlighted the need for Pakistan to have adequate databases due to increasing population. “The numbers have become so large that it is not possible to simply keep track.”
Underlining the need to use digital platforms, the Prime Minister said SAMRS was the “perfect way to do it”.
“I have said that we will go to the union councils and make the elected representatives responsible for identifying children in their villages to allocate them a digital ID,” CM Murad said.
Murad noted that SAMRS has been implemented in 600 schools so far, while the province has a total of more than 40,000 schools.
Underlining that each and every child should be incorporated into SAMRS, the Prime Minister proposed that subsequent data be compared with that of the last census.
He said the system would be used to measure the number of out-of-school children, acknowledging that the current figures were “frightening to say the least”.
CM Murad pointed out that the SAMRS will also help determine the number of school dropouts. Last month, he had directed the school education department to make full use of technology to monitor students’ attendance, reduce the dropout rate and address the causes of absenteeism.
The Prime Minister highlighted the importance of educating children to create a democratic and well-civilized nation.
“Our mines, our minerals, our weapons and ammunition… they all reduce to zero if we do not have an educated nation,” CM Murad said.
He said the system will be implemented first in schools, then in colleges and finally in universities. He also called for “open access” to the system so that educators and experts can provide their opinions.
CM Murad pointed out that the SELECT project is being carried out in collaboration with the World Bank and SAMRS is a part of it. He added that the Asian Development Bank and other international agencies were helping in the reconstruction of the schools.
“This year we will spend more than 125 billion rupees on rebuilding flood-affected schools,” the Prime Minister said.
Murad noted that there were complaints that the education department was not properly implementing its development portfolio, but “we have seen an improvement compared to last year.” “I’m still not satisfied, there’s still a long way to go, but yes, it’s gotten better.”
