Integrated School Data Collection Platform (ISDCP)
The national platform we built and run for the ELRC and DBE, verifying over 438,000 education employees and 11.7 million learners in 21,174 schools.
Client
ELRC and the Department of Basic Education
Sector
Government and public education
Outcome
21,174 schools across eight provinces
The challenge
The Education Labour Relations Council (ELRC) and the Department of Basic Education (DBE) needed one verified source of personnel and learner data across public schools. The aim was to confirm that personnel records were accurate, and to improve the accuracy of learner numbers for planning and post provisioning.
That data had to be captured at school level, agreed by the people responsible for each school, protected against falsification, and reconciled with the state's payroll records, with an audit trail that employers, unions and the Department could all rely on.
What we built
We designed, developed and implemented the ISDCP, the platform behind the ELRC's national verification of personnel and learners in public schools. Each school's verification combined a physical headcount completed in a single sitting, identity verification and sign-off by the school's stakeholders, followed by reconciliation with National Treasury and PERSAL payroll data.
We also run the data analysis and reporting, including the flagged datasets that the Department and provincial education departments work from.
How we run it
IO Systems hosts the ISDCP in South Africa and supports it in production. The verification covered 21,174 public schools across eight provinces, verified more than 438,000 education employees and recorded more than 11.7 million learners.
In May 2026 the ELRC presented the ISDCP Executive Summary to Parliament's Portfolio Committee on Basic Education, and IO Systems, as the ELRC's service provider, presented the findings and answered the Committee's technical questions on the platform.
In the public record:
More of our work
Systems we built and still run.
