Last month we asked what stands in your way when supporting progressed learners. This edition is our answer. Scan the code with your phone or click here to tell us: after reading this edition, do you know where to start?  
   
 
  ON THE
DDD CALENDAR
   
  UPCOMING WEBINARS:
Want to find your way around the dashboard faster? Keen to profile your Grade 10, 11 & 12 learners to see which subjects need support? Get all the answers and more by joining an upcoming training webinar. Click any link below to book.
   
  TOPIC: Find it fast – dashboard navigation made simple. Learn how to trace the data journey from SA-SAMS to the dashboard; which filters to use and when; and how to extract data into Excel.
   
 
     
 
   
  TOPIC: How to profile Grade 10, 11 & 12 learners using the FET Promotion Profiles report. This webinar will teach you how to find the right report; profile your FET Phase learners; pinpoint why some didn't meet promotion criteria; and see exactly which subjects need support.
     
 
     
 
   
 
  DATA NEWS
AND UPDATES
   
  Effective learner profiling is the name of their game
   
 
   
  TOP: Zululand subject advisors, circuit managers and EMIS officials at a recent workshop on how to profile and support learners based on promotion criteria.

ABOVE: Northern Cape’s ZF Mcgawu district’s principals recently went “back to school”, learning how to activate their DDD accounts and log in to the dashboard.
 
 
     
 
                     
  1. FIND THEM       2. DIAGNOSE THEM       3. WORK YOUR LIST  
  Log in to DDD. Go to the Reports page to find the Promotion Profiles report for the phase you wish to view. Use the filters at the top of the dashboard to select the district, circuit, cluster or school, and grade. Click on the report for a quick overall view, and scroll down to click the data download button. Export the Excel file.     In the Excel document, click on the filter option; go to the “Previous Year Promotion” column filter and select “Progressed”. This reveals your progressed learners. Then view the Achievement column to see if they are currently meeting or missing any promotion criteria. Join a webinar for help – see links on right.     Then examine the subject columns to see which subjects are pulling each learner down. For one learner across every subject, cross-check this against the Learner Chart report — which also provides valuable additional context on each learner. Log in to the DDD Dashboard now, to get started.  
                     
 
     
 
         
  THEY DIDN’T WAIT UNTIL IT WAS EASY, AND NEITHER SHOULD YOU  
 
 

On 9 August 1956, 20 000 women walked to the Union Buildings in Pretoria and stood in silence for 30 minutes. Nobody told them it would be easy. They did it because it was necessary.

Seventy years on, the hard thing is smaller, but the instinct is the same. For many educators, opening the DDD Dashboard for the first time feels like walking into a room where everyone already knows the rules. The charts look busy, the filters look technical, and it's tempting to decide data is someone else's job.

But the learners who are struggling, or who have been progressed, are exactly the learners you can't support on instinct alone. They're easy to miss in a full classroom and easy to lose by year-end. Finding them means looking at the data: which learners, which subjects, which schools.

The women who marched in 1956 weren’t politicians. They were mothers, teachers and workers who understood that being counted mattered. The DDD Dashboard is, in its own quiet way, about the same thing — making sure no learner goes uncounted, and no teacher has to guess.

You don't have to be a data scientist, and you don’t have to find it easy. You only have to open it.

This Women's Month, log in to the DDD Dashboard, find your FET Promotion Profile report, and start with one school.

Hard things have never stopped South African women before.

 
         
 
       
 
    FROM PROGRESSED TO POSSIBILITY
 
 

Umthawelanga Senior Secondary in the Eastern Cape has the highest number of progressed learners in the province — 26% of this year’s Grade 12 class.

For principal Bongani Combi, who once sat in these same classrooms as a learner, that number represents young people who deserve another chance, not a result to manage.

Using the DDD Dashboard, Combi and his team move beyond overall performance figures to identify exactly which learners need support, in which subjects, and how urgently — building intensive, targeted classes instead of treating progressed learners as one group.

But for Combi, academic support is only half the answer. Progressed learners also carry the weight of repeated struggle, so the school celebrates their progress too, by introducing an award for learners who have most improved, and in this way reinforcing that every step forward counts.

Combi’s ambition for 2026: getting 60-70% of the progressed cohort to pass.

“Behind every red flag on a report is a learner who may need someone to believe in them before they can begin believing in themselves again,” he says.

Click here to read Combi's full story.

           
           
 

To share feedback on
this newsletter email:
Communication@newleaders.co.za		       For DDD technical
assistance contact:
help@dbedashboard.co.za		        
     
   
 
     
 

dbedashboard   The DDD programme is an initiative of the Department of
Basic Education, in collaboration with the Michael & Susan Dell
Foundation and New Leaders Foundation.		  
     

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