On 14 January in an article titled “Including dropouts in the matric pass rate detracts from the real issues affecting youngsters” and published by Daily Maverick, my counterpart, Elijah Mhlanga, at the Department of Basic Education (DBE) was at pains trying to explain the narrow debates that will be raging in the country post the announcement of the National Senior Certificate (NSC) or matric results.
Year in and year out, government has to explain or defend some of the decisions it makes and how our children perform at the end of their basic education years — from the exhausting 30% debate, which is deliberately misconstrued, to the inclusion of children who may not have reached their Grade 12 for one reason or another.
Mhlanga in his piece was trying to tell the country that at different times during the year, the Minister of Police reveals the number of children that are murdered and reports throughout the year by different media outlets give us a gruesome picture of how children lose their lives at the hands of those who are meant to care for and protect them.
Mhlanga was trying to say there are other reasons including social ills and untimely deaths of children that contribute to our children not reaching Grade 12.
In essence, the debate is about accounting for the children of this country who were in contact with different government departments for the strengthening of the country’s child protection system. We hardly contextualise and view basic education as a child protection tool.
We are a country without fail that can account for the majority of its school-going children because our children are in school. But maybe what Mhlanga was bringing forth as a new debate is that when we have integrated systems in the country with social development at the centre, we can be able to account for every child who enters the public schooling system.
Part of the work that our department has been doing is to integrate and interface with every government department so that we can be able to narrate the story of our children.
The Department of Social Development (DSD) is tasked with the responsibility of leading the development of the National Integrated Social Protection Information System (Nispis) which is a government initiative that strives to integrate administrative data systems to improve planning, budgeting, decision-making and enhancing evidence-based public policies and programmes.
Identification and protection through data
The department has begun this work and is putting the social grant information at the centre. This is by no means an easy task but we are happy to report that this work has begun and the interface with the few departments is beginning to give us a picture of what the “education experts” and “media analysts” will be doing in the following days — trying to make sense of the story of the South African child who goes through the public system, especially education.
What will be missing in the debates will be the contribution of other departments and government as a whole in its quest to educate and protect the South African child. The democratic government deliberately put social protection as an integral part of the South African welfare system and social assistance to boost poor and vulnerable household income.
Over the years government has invested in a myriad of social protection services for poor and vulnerable children, for example social grants, school nutrition programmes, no-fee schools, primary health care, sanitary dignity to ensure girl children attend school, as well as scholar transport for learners who are in a radius of 10km away from the school.
These interventions aim to improve the well-being and access to education in addressing intergenerational poverty and inequality. Research has illustrated that poor households use cash transfers to invest in the education of their children. Over the years poor and vulnerable children do not only attend school but also complete Grade 12, which is a key barometer to measure the country’s educational system.
These social grant beneficiary learners have proven over the years to complete Grade 12 with pass rates that allow them to attend institutions of higher learning. This evidence is made available by the linking and integration of various administrative data systems.
Since 2015, the DSD has institutionalised the coordination and sharing of administrative datasets on children receiving social grants to measure their educational performance. This achievement has been enabled by linking the different administrative data sets from the Sassa (SoCPen) database with the Department of Basic Education, Learner Unit Record Information and Tracking System (Lurits) and the National Senior Certificate database, using the unique identifier of the identity document (ID) number.
It is through the data integration partnership with key departments such as the Department of Basic Education, Sassa and NSFAS, that DSD can measure the academic performance of Grade 12 learners, and account for learners receiving social protection services in terms of how many Social Grant Beneficiaries have registered to write the National Senior Certificate, what is their educational outcomes and how many learners have applied for NSFAS funding and are funded.
Read more in Daily Maverick: Time for a ‘revolutionary visit’ — SA Students Congress sounds warning of protests over NSFAS chaos
For instance, out of the 881,219 population Class of 2023, 712,934 were receiving social grants and we can give this information up to the type of grant, the school, the deceased beneficiaries, grant status and even those children who are in conflict with the law and sat for their final examinations.
As the Minister of Basic Education describes the success of basic education as a working child protection tool, the Department of Social Development is improving its systems to make sure that we do not have unresearched and grandstanding conversations but accurate and informative data that account for each child in South Africa. DM