LAHORE: The Punjab Information Technology Board in collaboration with Schools Education Department (SED) has launched The School Education hotline for more than 53,000 public schools on Thursday. PITB chairman Dr Umar Said launched the hotline at a ceremony held at Arfa Karim IT Tower on Thursday. Addressing the audience, Dr Saif said that the Punjab education system was among the largest in the world as it had 14.5 million students and 325,000 teachers, whose performance is being monitored in real time by 1,143 school inspectors/education officials. The real time monitoring was not limited to attendance of students and teachers, cleanliness, and provision of tap water, but it also included a quiz application to get answers from students to judge the level of learning. In this regard, 49 million questions have so far been asked from students of different schools of the province, Dr Saif said. He further stated that the soft launch of the hotline made two months ago had revealed that out of 9,200 complaints received, 77 percent had been closed with the satisfaction of complainants. Dr Saif said that the hotline number 042-111-11-2020 has been prominently displayed outside the Punjab public schools. It remains open for service from 8am to 8pm and can be called with queries. Earlier, Education Special Secretary Rana Hassan Akhtar lauded the PITB’s interventions in the education sector, including eLearn project, and termed the hotline initiative as a big success, which had now reached its optimal level to serve the parents and the education department in helping identify school specific issues and trends. Later, Dr. Saif distributed shields among officials associated with the project. Published in Daily Times, April 20th 2018.