SNAP Survey of Ordinary Schools 1997-2016

South Africa, 1997 - 2016

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Reference ID

zaf-dbe-snaps-1997-2016-v1.6

Producer(s)

Department of Basic Education. Education Management Information Systems (EMIS) Directorate

Collections

South African Department of Basic Education

Metadata

DDI/XML JSON

Created on

Feb 07, 2018

Last modified

Mar 27, 2020

Page views

114764

Downloads

1473

Identification

Survey ID number

zaf-dbe-snaps-1997-2016-v1.6

Title

SNAP Survey of Ordinary Schools 1997-2016

Country

Name	Country code
South Africa	zaf

Study type

School Survey

Series Information

South African Department of Basic Education. Snap Survey of Ordinary Schools 1997-2016 [dataset]. Version 1.6. Pretoria: DBE [producer], 2017. Cape Town: DataFirst [distributor], 2017. DOI: https://doi.org/10.25828/2e3e-9x02

Abstract

The SNAP Survey of Ordinary Schools collects data from all schools in South Africa each year. The data forms part of the national Education Management Information Systems (EMIS) database used to inform education policymakers and managers in the Department of Basic Education and the Provincial education departments, as well as to provide valuable information to external stakeholders. For example, data from schools in the survey is used to compile and maintain the Master List of Schools in the country for education planning purposes.

Kind of Data

Census/enumeration data [cen]

Unit of Analysis

The units of analysis in the survey are schools in South Africa and their staff and learners

Version

Version Description

Version 1.6 Edited, anonymised dataset for licensed distribution

Version Date

2017-12-15

Version Notes

Version 1 of this dataset was provided to DataFirst by the Department of Basic Education (DBE) on 12 March 2014.
Version 1.1 is this deposit, converted from an Access Database to Stata, and labelled with coding provided by the DBE.
Version 1.2: In the original upload the learner enrolment file was omitted. Version 1.2 includes this file. The other data files are still labeled 1.1 as no changes to these have been made. The new version number reflects the inclusion of the missing file only.
Version 1.3: In this version variables names have been changed to lower case. The “natemis” variable is also now numeric across all data files. As versioning is done at file level as well as dataset level the files are now reversioned to 1.2 except for the Learner Enrolment data file which becomes version 1.3. Further disclosure control was undertaken on the "General" file and therefore this file is also version 1.3. The dataset is versioned in line with the latest data file, and so becomes version 1.3.
Version 1.4: Includes the first versions of the 2014-2015 data publically released by DataFirst. These data files are versioned as 1.1 (with 1.0 being the original MS Access files received from the DBE)
Version 1.5: Includes the 2016 SNAPS and introduces, for the first time, results from national senior certificate (NSC) between 2014-2016 to the dataset. These data files are versioned as 1.1 (with 1.0 being the original MS Access files received from the DBE)
Version 1.6: Excludes the national senior certificate examinations data that was erroneously included in the previous version. These results have been collated into their own separate data file which can also be found on the DataFirst data portal. Note that the versions of the individual data files remain the same given that they were unchanged.

Scope

Notes

School Data
School Name and email address, National EMIS number, Province, School level (Pre-Primary, Primary, Secondary, Intermediate or Combined), School Funding Type (Public or Independent), Ownership of school land [State, Church, Mine, Farm, Hospital, Trust, Company, Private Individual, Factory), Educational region, Educational district, and Circuit.
Earlier surveys collected data on Municipality, Nearest Town and Distance to Nearest Town (Km). Earlier surveys also collected data on Language of teaching and learning but from 2011 this data is no longer collected.
National senior certificate results by exam centre

Learner data
Total number of learners by grade and gender

Staff data
Category (Educators, Practitioners, Professional non-teaching staff, Administrative staff, Support staff, Hostel staff); Nature of appointment (full-time or part-time, permanent, temporary, substitutes), gender and source of remuneration (Schools Governing Body or the State). The distinction between "staff" and "practitioners" in the data files is that 'practitioners' are found almost exclusively in schools with Grade R and are not qualified educators, but people who teach in or assist, usually in the Grade R class.

Topics

Topic	Vocabulary
Primary Education	World Bank
Secondary Education	World Bank

Coverage

Geographic Coverage

The survey has national coverage

Geographic Unit

The data is at the level of town/nearest town to the school enumerated.

Universe

The survey covers all Ordinary Schools in South Africa, both Public and Independent. In some data collection years information on special needs education schools was collected and is included in this data set

Producers and sponsors

Primary investigators

Name	Affiliation
Department of Basic Education. Education Management Information Systems (EMIS) Directorate	Government of South Africa

Funding Agency/Sponsor

Name	Role
Government of South Africa	Funder

Survey instrument

Questionnaires

Data is collected with a survey questionnaire and educator forms. The principle completes the survey questionnaire and each educator (both state paid and other) in each school completes an educator form. Schools record their EMIS number provided by the DBE on the questionnaire and form for identification.

Data collection

Dates of Data Collection

Start	End
1997	2016

Data Collection Mode

Other [oth]

Data Collection Notes

The Snap Survey for Ordinary Schools is completed by all ordinary schools, both public and independent. School principals are sent both digital (on a cd) and hard copy versions of the survey questionnaire and the educator forms. These are required to be completed on or as close to the survey date as possible. The principal returns the completed survey tools to the respective District or Regional DBE Office.

School officials from the DBE Head Office and District officials periodically visit a random sample of 2% or 3% of schools to establish the accuracy of basic school information provided by schools in the survey.

Data appraisal

Data Appraisal

The data files do not cover the same period. Dates covered for each file are:

Applicable school grades data file (2010-2013)
General school data file (2007-2016)
Learner enrolment data files (1997-2016)
Master list data file (1997-2016)
Remuneration of practitioners data file (2010-2016)
Staff remuneration data file (1997-2016)

The 1997 and 1998 data in this dataset cannot be matched with other years as the learner count is too low.
The 1997 data also does not include data on schools in the Eastern Cape Province and the Limpopo Province
The 1998 data does not include data on schools in the Limpopo Province
The 2016 data has some duplicates in terms of all fields except one (which effectively means that there are multiple answers to the same question). We have included a duplicates flag dummy for those data files.

The Applicable grades data file does not include unique identifiers.

access_policy

Access authority

Name	Affiliation	URL	Email
Manager, DataFirst	University of Cape Town		support@data1st.org

Access conditions

Licensed dataset, accessible under conditions.

Citation requirements

Contacts

Name	Email	URL
DataFirst Helpdesk	support@data1st.org

Metadata production

Producers

Name	Affiliation	Role
DataFirst	University of Cape Town	Metadata producer

Date of Metadata Production

2020-03-27

Metadata version

DDI Document version

version 10

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