In order to avoid illegal registration of candidates for the Senior Secondary School Certificate Examination, the Ondo State Government has started gathering data from private and public secondary schools in the state.

The Commissioner for Education, Mr. Femi Agagu, who spoke at the flag-off of the 2018 National School Census in Akure, the state capital, on Thursday, said the exercise was aimed at updating existing data so as to enhance planning and policy thrust in the education sector in the state.

He said, “The exercise will enable the state government to vet the entry of candidates for the senior secondary school certificate examination and to avoid illegal registration, as well as to provide internal and external users of statistics with requisite educational data.”

Agagu explained that the state government would forward all data gathered from educational institutions to the Federal Ministry of Education for collation and analysis.

He said, “The exercise is also aimed at providing all the necessary data for monitoring the sustainable development goals and internal efficiency of our educational system, to populate the state statistical system and develop information templates from the report of the exercise and to determine the authentic and reliable pupil enrolment in the state.

“It is to ascertain the quality of teaching and non-teaching staff and their number in post, to assess and collate all infrastructural facilities in schools and colleges, to compute the data bank of the ministry (of education) and also provide resource/information for the Education Management Information System.”

The commissioner noted that, with the census, the government would be able to update the number of existing schools and determine the number of school-age and out-of-school children, as well as gender parity among other things.

Source: http://punchng.com/ssce-ondo-commences-census-of-public-private-schools/