By Saheed Ibrahim

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The Ondo State Government has urged private primary and secondary school owners and public schools heads and teachers to cooperate with enumerators for the 2024 annual school census taking off in the state.

The government assured that the census is not for taxation but for planning and implementation of strategies to ensure educational development in the state.

Speaking at the flag-off of training for enumerators of the exercise in Akure, the State Commissioner for Education, Science and Technology, Laolu Akindolire,  said that the exercise would enable the ministry to generate accurate, timely and reliable data for adequate educational planning and development in the state.

He added that relevant data would be gathered, collated and carefully analysed for short, medium and long-term development planning and decision-making by the government.

Represented by the Ministry’s Permanent Secretary, Folasade Adegoke, he explained that the data collected is a condition to attract funds from donors and development partners within and outside the country to the state education sector.

“This is part of our initiatives to attract funds to the sector to complement the government’s efforts towards engendering accelerated development to the state educational system,” he said.

Akindolire enjoined other collaborating agencies of government and head teachers to attend to the enumerators by making all relevant records such as statutory, administrative and teaching-learning records among others, available for collation.

Similarly, the Chairman of the State Universal Basic Education Board, SUBEB, Victor Olambimtan, said that the school census was a crucial tool to help the government plan its programmes and direct its interventions properly.

He appealed to school owners not to falsify data, stating that the exercise is not to tax schools but for planning purposes.

Olabimtan noted that the exercise will be done electronically across both public and private schools in the State, adding that a designated portal is already deployed to the State Ministry of Education in conjunction with ODSUBEB, for the function.

He implored the enumerators to be trained on how to make use of the portal which they will replicate at their respective Local Government areas to see the training as an important assignment which needs to be handled with seriousness.

Stakeholders in the education sector, including the National Association of Proprietors of Private Schools, NAPPS and the All Nigeria Conference of Principals of Public Schools, ANCOPPS, pledged their support for the exercise.