Smith Family charity explores ways to revolutionise education support

A dashboard developed by the Department for Education is giving The Smith Family's frontline team members real-time access to educational information on students who are part of the charity's Learning for Life scholarship program.

"It's a game changer having live data," Smith Family team leader Kate Dickeson said. "My team can intervene when issues are actually happening."

The Learning for Life program provides financial support, personal support for students and their families, and practical support through education and mentoring programs.

Family Partnership co-ordinators work closely with families to ensure any issues that could prove a barrier to their child's education are addressed as quickly as possible.

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"The key for us is live data around school attendance, and students' numeracy and literacy grades," Ms Dickeson said.

Until now, The Smith Family has only been able to see this data once a year, and often months after the end of the school year.

"Sometimes it has taken eight months," Ms Dickeson said. "There was such a lag time in getting this information, whereas now we can open up the dashboard and see it day by day.

"Also, we can see enrolment history. If a student leaves a school and enrols in another school, we can see that straight away.

"It means we are able to follow up and keep students who need support on our out-of-school programs, rather than losing track of them," Ms Dickeson said.

Where good progress has been made, Smith Family team members can congratulate the students, helping to reinforce the value of education. This type of positive support can contribute to keeping young people engaged in their education.

Setting up the dashboard was not a simple process. Firstly, the project required a change of legislation to allow the data to be shared with a non-government organisation.

"We had the regulations amended to ensure that The Smith Family was covered, and that means we can freely exchange information on individuals," Director of Data Analytics and Reporting at the SA Department of Education David Engelhardt said.

"Access to the information is as close to real time as we can get it, and the children get the support that they need. You can go out and say, I notice you were sick last week. Is there anything I can do to help?

"So, it changes the nature of the relationship to some degree, because it provides some points of connection and understanding about what's happening in that child's life."

The Smith Family also needed consent from the families involved to access the student data.

"We really value the partnerships we have with families and their right to decide what happens with their data. It was important they understood what information we wanted to look at and why," Ms Dickeson said.

"So, we started calling every single one of our families and explaining in detail what the project is."

The vast majority of families support sharing this information.

So far, close to two thirds of over 6500 South Australian students on the Learning for Life program have their data in the dashboard and that number will increase as frontline team members talk to more families about the initiative.

David Engelhardt is keen for education departments in other states to follow with similar data-sharing programs.

"The value proposition about the benefits to children is so clear that I suspect that, once we've demonstrated that you can do it safely, others will follow," he said.

"This is a good thing for the kids."