Cape Town - The Western Cape Education Department (WCED) is using data mined as part of the National Data-Driven District (DDD) project to assess the type of mental health support needed by learners and teachers in the province.
WCED Business Intelligence chief director, Ian de Vega, told the education standing committee that the department had therapists in the system who went out and assessed the mental health needs of the learners.
He said the WCED worked with Momentum Health, which provided support. De Vega was briefing the committee on how the WCED utilises data and the type of data and the contribution that the WCED made, if at all, to the National Data-Driven District (DDD) project.
He was responding to a question from committee member Christopher Fry (DA), who wanted to know whether the mental health data collected was that of the learners and teachers or just the learners alone.
He said the DDD programme was designed to increase the quality of education data and to empower education officials to use data to positively impact learners.
The data collected is then added to the DDD dashboard, which allows education officials around the country to access innovative, visual representations of real-time learner data spanning individuals, schools, districts and provinces.
De Vega told the committee that the department used a system called CEMIS and said that only 23 schools in the province used the national South African School Administration and Management System (SA-Sams).
He said the reason for this was that unlike CEMIS, SA-Sams was a standalone system which did not allow for learner real-time transacting or learner tracking.
Committee chairperson Deidré Baartman (DA) said the data collected from the province needed to be aligned with the data held by the national education ministry because if it was incorrect it would affect the provincial equitable share formula at a national level.
Committee member Mesuli Kama (ANC) asked if the data could assist in understanding what led to children dropping out of school before they wrote their final exams.
Vega told him that the department looked at the issue as one of retention as the term dropout was not clearly defined and could cause problems because children did not necessarily drop out but sometimes left the mainstream sector for TVET colleges and the like.