REPORTS · ANNUAL SCHOOL CENSUS

Annual School Census

Every school in Kano State is counted once a session, in the sixth week of the first term, by a trained enumerator with a tablet. Nothing is budgeted for in this State that has not first been counted, and this is the count.

What the census is

The Annual School Census is the complete enumeration of the education system of Kano State. It is not a sample and not an estimate. In the sixth week of the first term, every public, private, Islamiyyah, Tsangaya, technical and non-formal school in the State is visited by a trained enumerator carrying a tablet loaded with the school register, and a return is taken on the spot in the presence of the head teacher or proprietor.

The census is run by the Directorate of Planning, Research and Statistics and it feeds the education management information system — the single record from which the Ministry and all eight boards work. When SUBEB calculates a capitation payment, when the Education Development Support Board ranks a school for a classroom block, when the Ministry decides where the next 8,000 teachers go, or when a figure appears on this website, the source is the same census return.

That is why the return matters to a head teacher far more than it looks. A school that under-reports its enrolment is paid capitation on the smaller number. A school that does not record its broken classrooms will not be ranked for repair. A school that omits its pupils with disabilities receives no specialist support. The census is the mechanism by which a school in Doguwa is seen from Kano, and a school that is not in it is, administratively, not there.

Enumeration takes one week in the school and about twelve weeks end to end, from the gazetting of the instrument to the publication of the final tables. The 2025/2026 census achieved a 99.2 per cent return rate: 38 schools out of 4,800 had not returned by the close of the query window, and each of those has been referred to the board that approves it.

The 2025/2026 census

4,800

Schools enumerated

Every school in all 44 LGAs

99.2%

Return rate

38 schools outstanding at close

2,400

Trained enumerators

Deployed from the six zones

2.8%

Returns requiring correction

Down from 4.6 per cent last session

What the census captures

One instrument, form MOE/CEN/01, in eleven sections. Every field below is captured for every school, whoever owns it.

Geo-coordinates of the school gate, captured on the tablet, and the ward and local government area.
Enrolment by class and by sex, from Nursery 1 through SS 3, Trade 1 to Trade 3 and the three literacy levels.
Learners with disabilities by type — hearing, visual, physical, intellectual and multiple — and whether the school can support them.
Repeaters, new entrants, transfers in and out, and learners who left during the previous session.
Teachers by qualification, by sex, by subject taught and by TRCN registration status.
Non-teaching staff, and whether the school has a trained counsellor and a first-aid trained member of staff.
Classrooms counted and graded — sound, needing repair, or unusable — with the seating places in each.
Water: source, whether it functions on the day of the visit, and distance from the classroom block.
Toilets: number, whether separate for girls, whether lockable, and whether they function.
Furniture: pupil desks and chairs, teachers' tables, cupboards, and the seating gap against enrolment.
Textbooks by core subject against the published entitlement, and whether books are in pupils' hands.
Laboratories, workshops, libraries and ICT centres, with apparatus and equipment counted rather than reported.
Perimeter fencing, electricity, whether the school has a functioning school-based management committee, and whether feeding is running.

Who must make a return

Every school in Kano State, whoever owns it and whatever it teaches. A return is a condition of approval or registration, and it is free.

Public basic schools

SUBEB · through the LGEA

Every public primary and junior secondary school, returned by the head teacher and countersigned by the Education Secretary of the local government education authority.

Public senior secondary schools

KSSMB

Every senior secondary school, including boarding schools, returned by the principal with the boarding roll and the subject-combination position.

Private, community and mission schools

PVIB · condition of approval

Every approved fee-paying, community and voluntary school. A missing return is a defect on the annual inspection and can hold up a licence renewal.

Islamiyyah and Tsangaya schools

KSQISMB

Integrated and non-integrated Islamiyyah schools and Tsangaya centres, returned by the Mallam or proprietor with the LGA Coordinator. The return is what brings learners into the feeding, materials and certificate programmes.

Technical and vocational institutions

STSB

Technical colleges, science secondary schools and vocational centres, with the trade enrolment, workshop condition and consumable position.

Non-formal and adult centres

AGMEd

Adult learning centres and community literacy circles, returned by the centre supervisor with the three literacy levels disaggregated by sex.

The census calendar

The dates below are for the 2025/2026 census. The pattern is the same every session: the instrument is fixed before the term opens, the count happens in one week, and the queries are settled before the term closes.

Week 1 — the instrument is gazetted

Form MOE/CEN/01 is published and circularised to every board, every education authority and every approved school with the census circular from the Permanent Secretary. Any change from last session is listed on the first page.

Weeks 2 to 4 — enumerators are recruited and trained

2,400 enumerators, most of them serving teachers and LGEA staff, are trained at the six zonal centres on the instrument, the tablet, the disability definitions and conduct in a school. Nobody enumerates without the training certificate.

Week 5 — the school listing is refreshed

The register is reconciled against approvals granted, revoked and lapsed since the last census, so that the enumerator arrives with the correct school code and the previous session's figures already on the tablet.

Week 6 — enumeration, 20 to 24 October 2025

Every school is visited. The return is completed with the head teacher or proprietor present, classrooms and toilets are physically observed rather than reported, and both parties sign on the tablet. A copy is left with the school.

Weeks 7 and 8 — validation and queries

Returns are run against the validation rules. Anything that fails is queried back to the school on form MOE/CEN/02, and the school has ten working days to answer. A query is a question, not an accusation.

Weeks 9 and 10 — verification visits

A five per cent sample — 240 schools drawn at random plus every school whose figures moved more than 15 per cent — is revisited by a verification team that did not take the original return.

Weeks 11 and 12 — sign-off

The Directorate of Planning, Research and Statistics reconciles the census against the boards' termly returns and the teacher payroll, and the Director signs the tables. Nothing is published before that signature.

End of first term — publication

Provisional tables are published with the December circular; the final tables, the school-level indicators and the machine-readable datasets follow in the second term at /reports/open-data.

Headline census findings by level

A school teaching more than one level is counted at each level it teaches, so the school column does not sum to 4,800. Pupils per classroom counts only classrooms graded sound or needing repair; unusable classrooms are excluded, which is why the crowding figures are higher than a school building count would suggest.

Level	Schools offering it	Enrolment	Teachers	Usable classrooms	Pupils per classroom
Pre-Primary	1,180	412,000	7,400	6,200	66
Primary	2,380	1,860,000	38,600	31,400	59
Junior Secondary	620	580,000	13,200	10,600	55
Senior Secondary	286	340,000	12,900	7,900	43
Technical and vocational	22	38,400	2,100	1,180	33
Non-formal, Tsangaya and adult	640	169,600	3,800	2,400	71
All levels	—	3,400,000	78,000	59,680	57

Schools by category

The register as it stood at the close of the census, by category and by the board that manages it.

Category	Level	Board	Schools	What the category covers
Public Primary	Primary	SUBEB	2,380	Primary 1 to Primary 6 in every ward of the State, free and compulsory under the Universal Basic Education Act.
Public Junior Secondary	Junior Secondary	SUBEB	620	JSS 1 to JSS 3, the upper half of basic education, ending in the Basic Education Certificate Examination.
Public Senior Secondary	Senior Secondary	KSSMB	268	SS 1 to SS 3 in the science, arts, commercial and technical streams, ending in WASSCE and NECO.
Science Secondary	Senior Secondary	STSB	18	Selective boarding schools for the pure and applied sciences, admitting on the Qualifying Examination.
Technical College	Technical	STSB	14	Three-year trade programmes leading to the National Technical Certificate and the State Trade Test.
Vocational Centre	Technical	STSB	8	Short skills-acquisition programmes in tailoring, welding, catering, ICT, solar installation and block-laying.
Tsangaya School	Non-Formal	KSQISMB	480	Traditional Qur'anic schools under a Mallam, now enrolled in the integration programme with feeding and basic literacy.
Integrated Islamiyya	Primary	KSQISMB	290	Islamiyyah schools teaching the full basic-education curriculum alongside Arabic and Islamic studies.
Non-Integrated Islamiyya	Non-Formal	KSQISMB	130	Islamiyyah schools not yet teaching the core curriculum, being supported towards integration.
Private School	Primary	PVIB	214	Fee-paying proprietary schools approved and licensed by the Private and Voluntary Institute.
Voluntary / Mission School	Primary	PVIB	42	Schools founded and run by a mission, church or voluntary agency under an approval from the Ministry.
Community School	Primary	PVIB	44	Schools established by a community or town union and taken on by the State for support and supervision.
Special Needs School	Primary	SUBEB	12	Schools for learners who are deaf, blind, physically disabled or have intellectual disabilities, plus inclusive units.
Adult Learning Centre	Non-Formal	AGMEd	30	Basic literacy, post-literacy and vocational classes for adults and out-of-school young people.
Public Library	Library	KSLB	30	Reading rooms, children's corners, reference collections and examination study spaces open to everyone.
Annexes and satellite campuses	All levels	All boards	220	Campuses returned under a parent school, counted in the published total of 4,800 schools but not separately registered.
Total	—	—	4,800	The published school count of Kano State.

Data quality — how we know the figures are right

A census is only worth the checks applied to it. Every return is run against a set of validation rules before it is accepted: class enrolments must sum to the school total; boys plus girls must equal the class figure; the teacher count must reconcile to the payroll for a public school and to the staff return for a private one; the geo-coordinate must fall inside the boundary of the local government area claimed; seating places cannot exceed the classroom count multiplied by the standard; and any figure that has moved more than fifteen per cent since the last census is held for explanation rather than accepted.

A return that fails a rule is queried back to the school on form MOE/CEN/02, and the school has ten working days to answer. In the 2025/2026 census 2.8 per cent of returns — 134 schools — required a correction after query, down from 4.6 per cent in the previous session. The improvement is almost entirely due to validation now running on the tablet at the point of capture, so that an arithmetic error is caught while the enumerator is still standing in the school.

Beyond the rules, a five per cent sample is physically re-visited. 240 schools were drawn at random, together with every school whose enrolment moved more than fifteen per cent, and re-enumerated by a team that had not taken the original return. Where the two returns disagreed by more than three per cent, the verification figure was taken and the original enumerator's whole workload was re-checked. Four enumerators were removed from the exercise on that basis and their schools were re-enumerated in full.

Revisions after publication are logged, never made silently. Each dataset carries a changelog with the date, the school or table affected, the old figure, the new figure and the reason. Provisional tables are marked provisional until sign-off, and anyone quoting a census figure should quote the version they used.

The census is free — and it is not optional

Making a census return costs a school nothing. There is no form fee, no enumerator fee, no facilitation and no charge of any kind at any stage. No enumerator may ask a school, a head teacher, a proprietor or a parent for money, and none may accept a gift. Report any such demand immediately on 0800 MOE KANO or at info@moe.kn.gov.ng with the date, the school and the name on the enumerator's identity card.

Every enumerator carries a photographic identity card issued for the exercise and a letter naming the schools assigned to them. Ask to see both before answering any question, and telephone the local government education office if anything about the visit is not right.

A return is a condition of approval or registration. A private, community or mission school that fails to return is in default of the condition of its approval, and the default is recorded on the annual inspection and may hold up a licence renewal. A public school that fails to return will not be paid capitation on its true enrolment, because there is no other record of it.

Questions from head teachers and proprietors

The enumerator came on a day many pupils were absent. Does that reduce my enrolment figure?

No. The census records enrolment from the admission and attendance registers, not a headcount of the children in the room on the day. The enumerator will ask to see the registers and will record the enrolled figure. Attendance on the day is recorded separately and is never used for capitation.

What do I need to have ready before the census week?

The admission register, the class registers for every class, the staff list with qualifications and TRCN numbers, the last session's census copy, the textbook stock and issue records, and the furniture inventory. Have the school approval or registration certificate to hand as well. Preparing these takes an afternoon and saves a query later.

Can I make the return online instead of waiting for an enumerator?

No. The return is taken in the school, in your presence, because half of the instrument is physical observation — classrooms graded, toilets checked, water tested, apparatus counted. A return that was not observed would not be a census. You do keep a copy of the completed return on the day.

My figures are queried and I think the query is wrong. What do I do?

Answer the query on form MOE/CEN/02 within ten working days, attaching the register page or record that supports your figure. A query is a question, not a finding. If the evidence supports you, your figure stands and the correction is made on our side, not yours.

Does the census affect my capitation, my teacher establishment or my project ranking?

Yes, all three. Capitation is paid per enrolled pupil on the census figure. A school's teacher establishment is fixed from census enrolment. And the Education Development Support Board ranks schools for classrooms, water, sanitation and furniture on census evidence — a need that is not in the census cannot be ranked, however real it is.

I run a private school. Does the census expose my fees or my accounts?

No. The census captures no fee schedule, no account and no financial information from a private school. It captures learners, staff, buildings and facilities. Your fee schedule is filed separately with the Private and Voluntary Institute under the approval process and is not part of this instrument.

I run a Tsangaya school. Does making a return change who owns or controls the school?

No. A census return does not change ownership, the Mallam's authority or the Qur'anic curriculum. It records the school and its learners in the State record, which is what makes them eligible for feeding, materials, teacher support and the certificate. Registration and enumeration are both free.

Where can I see my own school's return after publication?

School-level indicators are published in the census dataset at /reports/open-data, and your local government education office holds the signed return. From the 2026/2027 session the Ministry will publish the full return of every school, so that a parent can read the return for their own school.

The census, as data

Census tables, school-level indicators, the enrolment series and the infrastructure condition data, downloadable under an open licence.

Open data Education statistics Census forms