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Edition:
10 March 2008
(A) INTRODUCTION
1. BACKGROUND
This
document provides specifications for the Department of Education's unit record
statistics collections for higher education students and staff.
The unit record
collections for students and staff data replace the collection of data in the
form of SAPSE tables. On 19 March 1999
all higher education institutions were informed about the main features of the
unit record collections through the document entitled A New Higher Education Statistical Reporting System for Students and
Staff - A Concept Paper. Subsequently on 11 August 1999, the
Department provided to all institutions the key technical details about the
collections: specifications for file scopes, file structures, data element
dictionary and glossary.
Those specifications
are to be implemented for the first time in respect of 1999 data for students
and 2000 data for staff.
The initial edition of
this document is consistent with the 11 August 1999 specifications and includes
full details of those specifications.
Additional information is provided about the processes that institutions
are to implement in complying with the Department's requirements for the
provision of the returns required. All
other relevant technical specifications are also provided, including edit
validation rules.
2. CONTENTS OF THIS DOCUMENT
The
role of this document is to provide complete specifications which define the
requirements of the Department in respect of the unit record student and staff
data collections. A secondary role of
the document is provision of information to users of data from the collections
so that they are aware of the nature of the data provided by institutions.
This
document provides the following information:
Section A: Introduction
Section B: History of amendments
Section C: Contacts
Section D: Steps involved in preparing returns
Section E: Scopes of flat ASCII files to be
prepared by institutions, census dates, due dates for returns
Section F: Structure of flat ASCII files to be
prepared by institutions
Section G: Data element dictionary for base data
elements
Section H: Data element dictionary for derived data
elements
Section I: Glossary
Section J: How to determine credit values for
courses in universities
Section K: Edit validation rules
Section L: Installing and using the Department's
software package "VALPAC.Net"
Section M: CESM classification at the second level
The History of
amendments section of this document provides a cumulative listing of changes
that have been made to the original and any later editions. When any changes are made, a complete updated
version of this document will be released in electronic format.
3. RELATED DOCUMENTATION
The
following documentation provides related information which may be of value to
institutions in preparing their returns or to users of the data collected:
(Note: listing
to be suplied in next version of this document)
4. THE DEPARTMENT'S SOFTWARE PACKAGE "VALPAC.Net"
The
Department maintains a PC-based software package "VALPAC.Net". This package is provided at no cost to all
higher education institutions. They are
required to use VALPAC.Net to import data in ASCII (plain text) files prepared
from their systems into the VALPAC.Net Access database, generate edit
validation reports, and to generate other reports which are used in undertaking
quality assurance of the data prior to sending the data the Department.
VALPAC.Net is updated
from time to time. The latest version of
the package may be obtained at no cost from the Department.
5. RETURNS TO BE SENT TO THE DEPARTMENT
The
data for the unit record collections are to be sent to the Department in the
form of the Access database which is generated by VALPAC.Net. This is the only format which is accepted by
the Department.
The
Access database sent by an institution to the Department will contain data
imported from these ASCII files which the institution initially prepared from
its systems:
For the student collection:
Student
file
Course
registrations file
Credit
value file
Qualification
file
Qualification CESM file
Course
file
For the staff collection:
Staff
profile file
Staff
FTE file
For the Building space collection:
Campus
File
Building
File
Room
File
For the student
collection, the Access database is to be prepared and sent to the Department on
at least three occasions each year. The
third submission is the final audited data.
For the staff collection, the Access database is to be prepared an sent to the Department on one occasion each year. For the building space collection, the
Access database is to be prepared an sent to the
Department on one occasion each year.
Details about these submissions and the due dates are provided in
Section E.
6. RESPONSIBILITY FOR ASSURING THE ACCURACY OF THE DATA IN
THE COLLECTIONS
The
responsibility for ensuring the accuracy and completeness of the data in the
returns provided to the Department rests with the institution. To ensure the accuracy and completeness of
the data, institutions are required to use VALPAC.Net to generate edit
validation reports, distribution reports, summary reports and other reports,
and to use the contents of those reports in checking and assuring the quality
of their data.
Any data conditions
which lead to "fatal" errors being indicated in validation reports
must be fixed prior to sending the Access database to the Department. The Department will not accept returns which
contain data conditions that lead to generation of fatal error messages during
edit validation runs. Data conditions
that lead to the generation of "warning" error messages must be
inspected by institutions and the institution must be confident that such data
are appropriate and correct, and provide assurance to that effect to the
Department.
In addition to
inspecting and resolving validation error messages, institutions must also
inspect the data that can be generated through VALPAC.Net's
comprehensive reports. The institution
must be confident about the reasonableness and accuracy of the data summarised
in such reports prior to sending the data to the Department.
7. CONFIDENTIALITY OF THE DATA PROVIDED TO THE DEPARTMENT
The
Department recognises that unit record data imported into the VALPAC.Net
database's Student table, Course registrations table, Staff profile table and
Staff FTE table relate to individual students or staff, and are provided to the
Department by each institution on a confidential basis. Such information in unit record format will
be provided only to SAQA and to other Government bodies which have a legislated
right of access to the information and a Government-sanctioned need for the
information. Within the Department,
access to such unit record data will be restricted to authorised officers who
have a Department-sanctioned right of access.
This access will be restricted to staff responsible for processing the
data received and staff responsible for undertaking detailed analysis of the
unit record data.
Unit record data from
the Student table, Course registrations table, Staff profile table and Staff
FTE table will not be published in their raw form nor will such data be
provided in their raw form to individuals and bodies other than those referred
to in the preceding paragraph. Where
such data are shown in publications, the data will be in aggregated format with
counts relating to groups of people, not to individuals. However, publications will identify
aggregated data for individual institutions identified separately.
From the unit record
data the Department may generate for any individual or body, tabulations
showing aggregated data, and files of aggregated data in electronic
format. The aggregated data will
comprise counts relating to groups of people who have the same characteristics. Such data may include tabulations or records
with individual institutions being separately identified. As a rule, such aggregations of data which
will be released will have a compaction ratio of 1:5 (i.e. one aggregated
record for every five unit records) or a smaller ratio (i.e. 1:6 or 1:7, etc.).
Under no circumstances
will individuals and bodies other than those referred to in the first paragraph
of this section be provided data records or tabulations which show student
numbers, staff numbers, South African identity numbers and addresses.
The data in the Credit
value table, Qualification table, Qualification CESM table and Course table for
each institution do not relate to individual students or staff. Normally such information can be found in
institutional documents that are in the public domain. Therefore the data in these tables will be
treated by the Department as being not confidential and may be provided to any
interested individual or body.
The Department's
software application VALPAC.Net, which is to be used to validate data prior to
sending it to the Department, will include a function which will encrypt the
database which is to be sent to the Department.
8. ACCESS TO THE DATA COLLECTED
After
undertaking its own procedures to assure that the data provided by institutions
meet its requirements, the Department will transfer the data from individual
institution's databases to a national database.
That database will also contain aggregated historical data which will be
transferred from the holdings of data in the form of SAPSE tables for the years
1985 to 1998.
The Department will be
able to generate aggregated datasets from the national database and will make
them available to all institutions and to other bodies and people who have an
interest in the statistical data for the higher education sector. In generating these aggregated datasets, the
principles of confidentiality outlined in section 7 above will be adhered to.