News

The third one-week residential course will be held at the University of Cape Town from 4 to 8 May 2026. This upcoming one-week residential course focuses on maximising the impact of foundational learning data.

Hearts on fire and heads on ice: SALDRU’s first and next 50 years by Professor Murray Leibbrandt. Join the hybrid lecture in memory of SALDRU's founding director, 10 December 2025.

Building Capacity to Implement EGRA & EGMA Digitally. AFLEARN and DataFirst are pleased to offer a practical, hands-on training in SurveyCTO focused specifically on Early Grade Assessments (EGAs), 19 to 23 January 2026

View the latest dataset available from our open data portal: PALMS, PASES, the Department of Basic Education’s Learner Unit Record Information and Tracking System (LURITS), and UCT's Student Admissions Data 2006-2025

DataFirst, in partnership with the SA-TIED programme, invites you to the launch of two key datasets — PALMS v4 and PASES v1 — enhancing South Africa’s evidence base on labour and socio-economic development.

International Data Week brings together data scientists and other stakeholders to exchange ideas and expertise on data use for the good of science and society.

To honour Francis Wilson’s legacy, two prizes of R10 000 each are awarded annually for outstanding research that makes innovative use of publicly available data. Closing date for submissions is 30 October.

On 7 August 2025, we co-hosted a data rescue event with RDAP and the ICPSR. More than 100 volunteers joined the hackathon, working collectively to prepare files for public release.

Join us in capturing, describing, uploading, and preserving at-risk federal data to contribute to the Data Rescue Project.

Millions of children in Africa are unable to acquire age-appropriate skills in reading and mathematics especially in their early years.

For one week, a diverse group representing 13 African countries gathered to strengthen their skills in managing and analysing foundational learning data and build lasting connections with peers pursuing similar goals.

Asenze Study and the African Cigarette Prices 2016-2024 datasets are available on our Data Portal

In many African contexts, classroom-based or large-scale standardized assessments often fall short. One-on-one (1:1) assessments offer an alternative.

The University of Cape Town's, ZivaHub has been awarded the CoreTrustSeal Certification. DataFirst was a forerunner in achieving the certification, becoming the first African data repository to receive the CoreTrustSeal in 2018.

Data for all years of the Department of Basic Education’s Early Grade Reading Study are now available from our data site. Some key findings are that teacher coaching is effective, and the language used in learning is important.