Inaccuracies in Zero Dropout’s op-ed on school participation trends - Response to Zero Dropout 2022-05-16 II

Oct 19, 2026

Critiques inaccuracies in Zero Dropout’s March 2022 News24 op-ed on school dropout trends, arguing that it misrepresents South Africa’s education information systems and omits key clarifications. It explains the transition from the Tenth Day Head Count to learner-level data via LURITS, the distinct role of SA-SAMS for attendance, and the limitations of a rudimentary Excel Early Warning System. It further challenges pandemic participation claims by disentangling total dropout from pandemic-related absenteeism and citing evidence of enrolment declines not increasing during COVID-19.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages3

Reading Time8 min

AccessFree to download

Inaccuracies in the op-ed’s portrayal of data systems

LURITS learner-level data and identity validation

SA-SAMS attendance monitoring and planned transfer to LURITS

Early Warning System vs attendance backbone systems

Pandemic participation evidence and interpretation

NIDS-CRAM and extended absenteeism

Enrolment comparisons, ghost learners, and omitted releases

NSS 2021 results and Grade progression effects

School Realities reports (2020–2021) on secondary enrolments

Inaccuracies in Zero Dropout’s op-ed on school participation trends Martin Gustafsson Researcher at University of Stellenbosch and analyst at Department of Basic Education 16 May 2022 Zero Dropout, a South African group specialising in research and advocacy around dropping out from schools, released on op-ed in March 2022 on News24 titled ‘Knowledge is power: Real-time data on school dropout needed ’. There are several serious inaccuracies and omissionsin the article. First, the portrayal of the basic education sector’s information systems is inaccurate. Since the formal replacement in 2017 of the Tenth Day Head Count, also known as the Snap Survey, with systems capturing the details of individual learners, virtually all education statistics have been based on underlying data at the level of individual people. Zero Dropout’s article creates, in parts, the impression that this transition to individual-level data has not occurred. This transition was partly necessary to reduce the risk that enrolment numbers would be manipulated by provinces in order to secure more funding through the Treasury’s equitable share formula. Since 2017, Treasury has used data from the Learner Unit Record Information and Tracking System (LURITS) . LURITS is a national data warehouse which serves multiple purposes. It is acknowledged that aspects of it need further improvement. Above all, the system’s own learner identifiers are not always consistently used, especially when learners move from one school to another, often after Grade 7, or from one province to another. However, the thirteen-digit national identity number, also uploaded on LURITS is often able to fill this gap. Around 92% of learners in recent years have a national ID number on LURITS. This situation has gradually been improving. The Department of Basic Education (DBE) works routinely with the Department of Home Affairs to confirm the validity of identity numbers on LURITS. Day-to-day attendance is not currently uploaded on LURITS, which focusses on enrolments, but attendance is captured in the South African School Administration and Management System (SA-SAMS), used by 99% of schools outside Western Cape – in Western Cape a different system, CEMIS, is used. Current plans envisage attendance data being regularly transferred from SA-SAMS to LURITS. Zero Dropout ignores the role of SA-SAMS in monitoring attendance, and by implication diminishing attendance and ultimately dropping out. Instead, they argue for the use ofan ‘Early Warning System’ (EWS) to monitor dropping out in schools. What the article does not explain is that an EWS is something that Zero Dropout has invested some effort in developing and promoting in the South African context. A very rudimentary Excel tool is available on the Zero Dropout website. This tool requires a user at a school to enter basic information on each learner’s attendance, behaviour and academic results with a view to assessing each learner ’s risk of dropping out. The idea is an interesting one, which has been promoted internationally by UNICEF, but these tools have not been subject to any rigorous analysis of whether their predictions are accurate or, if they are, whether predictions change the behaviour of people ina school. The EWS standalone tool that Zero Dropout promotes is a completely different thing to the extensive backbone of systems, built up over the years, which monitor attendance. In the case of South Africa this is largely SA-SAMS. In 2022, the capturing of attendance on SA-SAMS, already high in public schools, will become mandatory. There are important debates around how SA-SAMS could be strengthened, not just with respect to the monitoring of learner attendance, but also with respect to its other functions. Zero Dropout makes no contribution to this debate in their article. Turning to the question of what has occurred to school participation during the pandemic, the article is also problematic. It makes reference to

FAQs

What does the critique say is inaccurate about the op-ed’s portrayal of education information systems?

It argues the op-ed creates the impression that statistics are not based on learner-level data, overlooking the shift since 2017 to systems capturing individual learner details.

Which system does the document say captures attendance day-to-day, and where?

It states attendance is captured in SA-SAMS for 99% of schools outside Western Cape, while Western Cape uses CEMIS.

Why does the document dispute the op-ed’s conclusions about pandemic-related dropout?

It says the op-ed confuses total dropping out with additional pandemic-related dropping out, and it points to arguments about “extended absenteeism” plus releases indicating overall declines during the pandemic, especially at secondary level.

Oct 19, 2026

Uploaded by Lucas Martin