The Department of Basic Education (DBE), along with the Education Labour Relations Council (ELRC), briefed the Portfolio Committee on Basic Education on 12 May 2026 on the verification of personnel in the Education Sector outcomes. For the first time, South Africa has a comprehensive, school-level, stakeholder-verified dataset covering personnel, infrastructure, and learner records across eight provinces – a verified, consensus-based baseline.

The exercise commenced during October 2025, after September training sessions for District Directors, Circuit Managers, and Primary, Secondary, and Special School Principals via Microsoft Teams, and concluded during March 2026, with the Comprehensive Data Analysis being completed and the full-population data analysis across all datasets – school infrastructure, learner demographics, management information, and stakeholder verification data – independently audited and verified.

Mr Mathanzima Mweli, Basic Education Director-General, explained that "the Integrated School Data Collection Platform (ISDCP) offers a central source of truth to which the Principals, South African Democratic Teachers Union (SADTU), Autonomous Teacher Unions (ATU), School Governing Bodies (SGBs), and Circuit Manager representatives agreed to. Initially established to support Post Provisioning Norm (PPN) processes for the DBE, the project scope expanded upon the issuance of a Department of Public Service and Administration (DPSA) circular to include identity verification and related compliance checks. Office-based staff were therefore also included in the headcount and verification project scope. The ISDCP encompasses the headcount and verification of state-employed education employees, learner headcount validation, and a comprehensive school-related data audit across all provinces, excluding the Western Cape Province."

He added that the ISDCP data collection process, co-signed by 59,636 unique stakeholders at 21,174 schools, and with 897 Circuit Managers verifying 438,163 educator and non-teaching staff records for 11.7 million learners, was praised as an example of best practice when recently presented to the Presidency. The datasets were released to Provincial Education Departments (PEDs) during January 2026, with 22,409 flagged personnel records (5.4% nationally) requiring review. Going forward, the DBE has identified four streams of focus with four multi-disciplinary teams: the Human Resource team for PERSAL to be regularly updated and to ensure that SA teachers with scarce skills such as Mathematics, Science, Technology, and African Languages are employed; the team working with the Department of Home Affairs (DHA) dealing with Undocumented Learners; the team dealing with Infrastructure in schools; and the team finalising the modernisation of SA-SAMS and LURITS for the tracking of learners.

ELRC's Chairperson, Adv Luvuyo Bono, and General Secretary, Dr Cindy Foca, led the briefing, along with a presentation on implementation by the Service Provider, Mr Chris Grobler. The ISDCP procedure focussed on four critical areas or data pillars: Learner data, including enrolment numbers, undocumented learners, and demographic and subject-specific distributions; Educator data, covering educator numbers, employment status, workloads, and posts; School Resource and Infrastructure data, encompassing facilities, equipment, security, and operational challenges; and School Management data, detailing leadership roles, training, and self-assessments for capacity building.

The platform's integrity architecture rests on a set of enforced controls: single-sitting enforcement, meaning the headcount at each school had to be completed in one continuous session; four-stakeholder co-signature at schools – every record co-signed in the same sitting by the Principal, a SADTU representative, an ATU representative, and an SGB representative, with Circuit Managers subsequently auditing the records after submission; Branch Head and District Director sign-off for Office Based Staff, extending the multi-party endorsement principle to the office-based staff tier; a tamper-evident audit trail recording every action, edit, and signature; offline-first operation with verified sync for connectivity-challenged schools; machine-assisted verification flagging duplicates and field mismatches at the point of capture; and POPIA-aligned access controls with phase-separated databases hosted in the Azure South Africa region.

The verification unfolded across six structured phases: Physical Headcount and Verification; Automated Review; Principal Correction; Circuit Manager Audit; PERSAL Preparation; and Collaborative Analysis (ELRC and National Treasury joint review). Supporting platform features include intuitive interface, automatic data saving, device caching, training videos, and online support, enabled adoption at scale, but it is the integrity architecture above that makes the resulting dataset defensible. The Office Staff Dataset was submitted to National Treasury on 4 December 2025, and the consolidated Educator Dataset was submitted on 18 December 2025.

Dr Foca raised two distinct priorities arising from the verification. On undocumented learners, she said that "collaboration between government departments is essential to assist South African learners who are undocumented." The ISDCP audit identified 610,322 undocumented learners across the eight participating provinces - 5.2% of the national learner population of 11.7 million. Of these, 362,571 (59.4%) are RSA nationals lacking documentation, and 247,751 (40.6%) are foreign nationals. Coordinated intervention by the DBE, the Department of Home Affairs, and the Department of Social Development is required to regularise documentation and unlock access to social grants and other entitlements. On recruitment and workforce reconciliation, Dr Foca noted that urgent attention is required for the 6,110 genuinely non-present educators identified through the verification - 5,685 on sick leave, 171 suspended, and 254 AWOL - representing funded posts with no classroom output, and the 7,018 transferred educators whose vacated posts require payroll reconciliation to confirm whether they have been filled. Recruitment focus should also prioritise South African teachers with scarce skills in Mathematics, Science, Technology, and African Languages.

Portfolio Committee Chairperson, Ms Joy Maimela said that the Committee will be holding sessions with the various PEDs to account on the urgent matters identified for each province, along with the progress on the identified streams. Overcrowding and undocumented learners remain a bone of contention, impacting on school admission and quality learning and teaching at classroom level.