Education
With regard to learner and teacher absenteeism rates as recorded in her Department’s Annual Report of 2018/19:
(1) Why is the audited value higher than the reported achievement?;
(2) whether this has had any impact on learner-performance outcome; if so, what are the relevant details?
(1) The 2018/19 audit established that manual record keeping of registers at school level, was inadequate. The discrepancy was because of the poor record keeping of manual school registers, and incorrect transcription of the data onto CEMIS at the end of the quarter.
The WCED is piloting an on-line solution in 446 schools where educators can do the registers from their cell phones or any mobile device. It tracks learner absenteeism daily, eliminates manual recording and transcription, is very fast and user friendly.
(2) It is difficult to assess impact at this stage as schools have only been recording summary level absenteeism and not learner level absenteeism. A learner level data mechanism which tracks absenteeism at learner level should in future, provide more detailed information to be able to see trends and possible impact more clearly.
