During the DG’s virtual engagement meetings with various provinces, the benefits of the Data Driven Districts (DDD) Dashboard was presented to show how data from schools can be presented in graphical formats to inform the monitoring and support processes. With the dashboard, officials can view the academic performance of schools and districts at subject and grade levels to assess progress, plan their resources and identify schools that need more support.

The DDD 2.0 provides innovative, real-time, visualised data at provincial, district, school or learner level, enabling officials to work smarter and to make informed data-driven decisions to implement system-wide interventions. In addition, the overview of any school can be analysed by district and provincial officials before engaging with School Management Teams (SMTs). In addition, the DDD assists with learners and subject profiling; the monitoring of learner’ attendance; and enrolment trends. The improvements ensure that data is more secure, and cutting-edge cloud technology is easy to scale and quick to change if improvements are needed. Other benefits include the faster upload of data, which means that information on the dashboard is visible sooner and with superior insights. The DDD 2.0 uses smarter authentication processes, making it more secure for users to log on (using a single sign-on). With more self-service functionality, users can do more without needing to contact the helpdesk; is quicker to load and simpler to view on almost any device, including mobile phones.

The graphical reports are based on the schools’ data that is submitted via the South African School Administration and Management System (SA-SAMS) which is designed for the South African Education Sector and is maintained by the DBE, ensuring that it is aligned to education policies. It is freely provided to all school and aims to assist SMTs with their own school administration and reporting. SA-SAMS provides the only electronic platform to ensure efficient and standardised policy implementation and reporting across all provinces.