The Office of the Director-General, in collaboration with the Education Labour Relations Council (ELRC), recently embarked on the verification of education employees within eight provinces, using the Online Integrated School Data Collection Platform. All provinces are part of the physical verification process, except for the Western Cape Province, which has its own system in place. The undertaking is currently entering Phase 3 with the training of Circuit Managers on 1 December 2025, to validate information from 2 to 9 December, with 10 December as the cut-off date for the final approval process.

During Phase 1, a total of 21,174 public schools were identified for completion. However, during Phase 2B, a significant number of schools have reported changes to their original headcount verifications submitted due to administrative errors; duplications; the incorrect classification of educators; deaths; incarceration and transfers. The window opportunity for the final resubmission phase ended on 28 November 2025, and schools that have not resubmitted will be clearly flagged in the Circuit Manager’s Phase 3 dashboard.

The Circuit Manager will request a portfolio of evidence to support any exceptions or missing data from the principal or school; verify the evidence against official records; and update the flagged data accordingly without overwriting the originally captured information and then complete the final review and sign off on the school. An Exception Report will be generated based on the difference between phases and submitted to National Treasury. The project objectives are to enable Circuit Managers to thoroughly review and validate school-submitted data for accuracy; provide tools for targeted updates without compromising original submissions; ensure a clear audit trail; provide online training material to enable rapid uptake; and highlight discrepancies as exceptions to aid in resolution and reporting. To maintain data integrity, the review phase operates in isolation from the original submissions, preventing any overrides and allowing for easy comparison of datasets.

The features and capabilities for Circuit Managers to perform their reviews efficiently, included, amongst others, the review of school data pillar summaries for flagging of inconsistencies or approval and the review of school staff verification records. In addition, capabilities will be updated and minor administrative errors corrected without altering substantive data. Upon completing the review, Circuit Managers must sign and approve all school data digitally as an official record of validation. No actions from the Circuit Manager can override or alter the original data submitted by schools, ensuring immutability of the source records, and this review phase will be stored in a physically separate database from the school-submitted data, reducing risks of data tampering. Differences between the two datasets will be automatically highlighted as exceptions for follow-up investigations or reconciliation processes.

Director-General, Mr Mathanzima Mweli, has been conducting regular meetings with Heads of Departments (HODs), Deputy Directors-General (DDGs), Chief Directors, District Directors, Governance, Human Resources, and Education Management Information System (EMIS) officials who are supporting the data capturing process within the various education districts. The virtual training sessions for primary, secondary, and special school principals, District Directors and Circuit Managers, using the online Integrated School Data Collection Platform (ISDCP), have been ongoing since September 2025, across the various phases. This verification does not intend to replace or render redundant the existing data collection mechanisms or sources of data such as SA-SAMS or LURITS but seeks to verify the accuracy of data.

DG Mweli expressed his gratitude to the ELRC for generously making this service and funding available, as well as to the service provider, Mr Chris Grobler and his team, for driving the implementation. The ISDCP procedure is a precise, evidence-based report for post-provisioning decisions, with the focus on four critical areas or data pillars: Learner Data (enrolment figures, undocumented learners, and demographic as well as subject-specific distributions); Educator Data (educator numbers, employment status, workloads, and posts); School Resource and Infrastructure Data (facilities, equipment, security measures, and operational challenges); and School Management Data (leadership roles, training initiatives, and self-assessment activities aimed at capacity building). The rapid participation demonstrates the effectiveness of the ISDCP framework in facilitating accurate and timely headcount reporting, which includes aggregate numbers of learners and staff without compromising individual privacy.