Education Data Analyst

UNICEF is committed to realising the rights of all children to help them build a strong foundation and have the best chance of fulfilling their potential.

We believe that ensuring a child is happy and healthy begins before birth: from ensuring their mother has access to good health care to reaching adulthood as a healthy, empowered and informed young person of the next generation. This journey relies on every child having access to quality health care, good nutrition, education, and growing up in a safe environment free from violence.

The South African government has identified the improvement in the quality of basic education as its number one priority as articulated in the National Development Plan, Vision 2030. With the achievement of high levels of participation during the compulsory years of schooling, the Department of Basic Education’s (DBE) Action Plan to 2019 is focused on improving efficiency and quality of learning outcomes. The national state of disaster as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic has magnified the already existing inequalities in the system requiring that more efforts be put in recovery while reimagining education provision in South Africa. UNICEF’s work in basic education and adolescent development focusses on three main interrelated areas that supports national efforts national efforts to improve learning achievements i.e. early childhood development, quality in basic education and adolescent development. Our work in these areas is implemented through an agreed work plan with the Department of Basic Education and includes policy support, advocacy, innovation, evidence generation, inter-sectoral partnerships, capacity support and development, implementation modelling and support, supplies, and technical assistance. In this regard, it is has embarked on supporting a series of joint collaborations with the Government and other non-governmental partners to address the barriers and bottlenecks to the improvement of quality and holistic primary and secondary education.

UNICEF seeks the services of a qualified Education Specialist to support the realization of the joint objectives with the Government. UNICEF seeks to boost its capacity to work with the government through the services of a qualified expert that will support interventions in Curriculum, care and support including Mental Health and Psychosocial Support, Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) including menstrual hygiene management, Foundational Literacy and Numeracy, ICT in Education, and life skills by use of data to inform the system. It is for this reason that the UNICEF aims to support the DBE Education Management Information Systems (EMIS). EMIS is tasked with the responsibility to collect, process, analyze and disseminate education data and information to support the monitoring and evaluation of the performance on education. EMIS is also required to promote the utilization of data in planning and decision making in line with its processes. On 20 May 2016, the Learner Unit Record Information and Tracking System (LURITS) was approved as the Basic Education Sector reporting system. This meant that reporting at a unit record level for learners and educators by the schools is done using electronic submission formats of data to the Provincial Data Warehouse (PDW) system. The data from the PDW is quality assured and cleansed to remove duplicates records and anomalies on data within the PED and prepared for uploading onto LURITS. The final LURITS data is used for the DBE programme planning and used by other government departments, institutions, media, parliament, researchers, international bodies, public, etc.

The data from LURITS, however, is not analyzed sufficiently and there is greater opportunity to leverage in this regard. Hence this request to UNICEF to assist DBE to promote further analysis and utilization of EMIS data in order to support in achieving our mandate fully.

Under the supervision of the Education Manager, the UN Volunteer will:
• Analyze the Department of Basic Education’s Education Management Information System data;
• Produce thematic reports in line with the DBE and UNICEF’s requirements in collaboration with the Department of Basic Education;
• Develop and publish reports using EMIS data – looking at EMIS reporting requirements (e.g. APP, UIS, NDP, SDG, indicators, and Parliament) and data requests from internal and external stakeholders;
• Review and editing of current reports;
• Identify gaps and challenges in the EMIS data sources and provide recommendations for improvement;
• Review the current Data Dissemination Standard for improvement, to align with international Standards;
• Assist in implementation and monitoring of EMIS Data Dissemination standard and recommend best practices on dissemination of EMIS data.

Furthermore, the UN Volunteer will be required to co-lead the delivery of the following:
• Report on quality of EMIS data focusing on the eight dimension of quality as defined by SASQAF, presented at the EMIS Technical Committee meeting, by end of September 2024;
• Edit Two EMIS Reports (School Realities 2024 and 2023 Education Statistics in South Africa);
• Produce thematic reports on issues affecting the education system such as, access to education system, Internal efficiency and learner retention, quality, and teacher inputs;
– Thematic Report 1: Access to Education;
– Thematic Report 2: Internal Efficiency and learner retention, and;
– Thematic Report 3: Education Quality;
• Support updating, gazetting, and implemented data Dissemination Standard, which will be monitored, by end of September 2025.