Master List of Schools 2012

The Master List of Schools is a record of all schools in South Africa. The data forms part of the national Education Management Information Systems (EMIS) database used to inform education policymakers and managers in the Department of Basic Education (DBE) and the Provincial education departments, as well as to provide valuable information to external stakeholders. The list is maintained by provincial departments and regularly sent to DBE for updating. A key function of the master list is to uniquely identify each school in the country through a school identifier called the EMIS number. Additionally, the list contains data on school quintiles - categories (quintiles) based on the socioeconomic status of the community in which the school is situated. Analyses comparing schools' performance often use school quintiles as control measures for socioeconomic status, to take into account the effect of, for example, poor infrastructure, shortage of materials and deprived home backgrounds on school performance. There are also other basic data fields in the school master list that could provide the means to answer some of the most frequently asked questions about learner enrolment, teachers and learner-teacher ratio of schools. It is a useful dataset for education planners and researchers and is even widely used in the private sector by those who regularly deal with schools.