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South Africa's quintile system classifies every public school from 1 to 5 based on the economic circumstances of the community it serves. Quintile 1 schools serve the most disadvantaged communities, Quintile 5 the least. The classification determines how much government funding the school receives and whether it may charge mandatory school fees. Of the 22,215 public schools with a quintile on record in the DBE EMIS Q3 2025 extract, 18,521 — 83% — sit in the no-fee band, and they enrol 74% of the learners at quintile-ranked public schools. Quintiles describe a school's context, not its quality.
What does each quintile mean?
| Quintile | Community | School fees |
|---|---|---|
| Q1 | Most disadvantaged | No mandatory fees |
| Q2 | Second most disadvantaged | No mandatory fees |
| Q3 | Middle band | No mandatory fees |
| Q4 | Less disadvantaged | May charge fees |
| Q5 | Least disadvantaged | May charge fees |
Q1–3 nationally designated no-fee. Provinces may extend no-fee to Q4–5 schools. Fee-charging schools must offer fee exemptions. Per-learner school allocation targets for 2026 from GN 7160, Government Gazette 54180 of 20 February 2026; set annually by the Department of Basic Education and paid by provinces, which may fund above or below target.
Quintile 1 schools serve the most economically disadvantaged communities, Quintile 2 the second most, and Quintile 3 the middle band. All three are no-fee: they cannot charge mandatory fees, and all three receive the same per-learner school allocation — the no-fee threshold. The difference between them is the poverty of the community each serves, not the funding each gets. Quintile 4 schools receive roughly half the threshold amount per learner and may charge fees, though many have been declared no-fee by their provincial department. Quintile 5 schools serve the least disadvantaged communities, receive the lowest per-learner allocation, and may charge school fees.
How much government funding does each quintile get?
The 2026 no-fee threshold — the target school allocation the state aims to give every Quintile 1, 2 and 3 school for each learner it enrols. The same figure applies across all three: there is no funding gradient inside the no-fee band. A school funded at or above this level may not charge mandatory fees.
| Quintile | 2026 allocation target |
|---|---|
| Q1 – Q3No-fee band | R1 835the no-fee threshold |
| Q4Fee-permitted | R919half the threshold |
| Q5Fee-permitted | R315a sixth of the threshold |
Day-to-day running costs — textbooks and stationery, electricity and water, telephone, cleaning materials, minor maintenance and repairs.
Educator salaries. Teaching posts are funded separately by the provincial department, so the allocation is not the school's whole budget — and a school's quintile does not set its number of teachers.
2026 amounts from the national table of targets for the school allocation in the Amended National Norms and Standards for School Funding, GN 7160 in Government Gazette 54180 of 20 February 2026. These are national targets — what a school actually receives is paid by its provincial department, which may fund above or below target. Gauteng cut its Quintile 5 allocation from R879 to the R315 national target from April 2026.
Each year the Department of Basic Education gazettes a target "school allocation" per learner. For 2026 the no-fee threshold is R1 835 per learner, and it applies equally to Quintile 1, 2 and 3 — there is no funding gradient inside the no-fee band, which surprises people who assume Quintile 1 schools are funded more generously than Quintile 3. The step down comes after that: R919 per learner at Quintile 4 and R315 at Quintile 5. This allocation covers day-to-day running costs — textbooks and stationery, electricity and water, cleaning, minor maintenance — and not educator salaries, which the provincial department funds separately through teaching posts. So the quintile shapes a school's running budget, not the number of teachers it is given. These are national targets; what a school actually receives is paid by its province, which may fund above or below them. Gauteng cut its Quintile 5 allocation from R879 to the R315 national target from April 2026, which is why some fee-charging schools there have raised fees.
What do quintiles mean for school fees?
Quintile 1, 2, and 3 schools are designated no-fee schools: they cannot charge mandatory school fees and receive higher per-learner government funding to cover their costs. Quintile 4 and 5 schools may set their own fees, but provincial education departments may declare them no-fee too, and many have: 993 Quintile 4 and 5 public schools are recorded as no-fee in the EMIS Q3 2025 extract, with Gauteng alone accounting for 487 of them. That is 27% of all Quintile 4 and 5 public schools, so the quintile alone is not a reliable guide to whether a particular school charges — check the school's own fee status. No-fee also does not mean no cost: no-fee schools may still ask for voluntary contributions and charge separately for uniforms, stationery and transport. At fee-charging schools, the South African Schools Act requires exemptions for families who cannot afford the fees, and no public school may exclude a learner or withhold a report for non-payment.
How is a school's quintile determined?
A poorer province is allocated more Quintile 1 and 2 places, so the bands are intended to mean roughly the same thing nationally even though ranking happens within each province. Quintiles are reviewed when updated census data becomes available.
Each school is assigned a poverty score based on the economic profile of its surrounding area, using national census data on household income, income dependency ratio (unemployment rate), and literacy. Each provincial education department then ranks its own schools by that score and works down the list, filling the five bands according to quotas set nationally. Because a poorer province is allocated a larger share of Quintile 1 and 2 places, the bands are intended to mean roughly the same thing across the country — a Quintile 2 school in Limpopo and a Quintile 2 school in Gauteng sit at comparable points on a national poverty scale, even though each was ranked within its own province. One consequence surprises many parents: the score describes the area the school draws from, not the families actually enrolled, so a school can sit in a poor catchment while enrolling learners who travel in from elsewhere, or the reverse. The quintile reflects the school's location and community, not how it performs. Quintiles are reviewed when new census data becomes available, which is infrequent, so a school's ranking can lag changes in the surrounding area by years.
How many schools are in each quintile, province by province?
Swipe the table to see Q4, Q5 and totals →
| Province | Q1 | Q2 | Q3 | Q4 | Q5 | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Limpopo | 1,420 | 1,499 | 554 | 32 | 66 | 3,571 |
| Eastern Cape | 1,818 | 1,333 | 1,553 | 89 | 110 | 4,903 |
| North West | 483 | 298 | 480 | 131 | 14 | 1,406 |
| KwaZulu-Natal | 2,007 | 1,716 | 1,271 | 403 | 336 | 5,733 |
| Free State | 311 | 188 | 254 | 82 | 64 | 899 |
| Mpumalanga | 599 | 458 | 260 | 156 | 118 | 1,591 |
| Northern Cape | 165 | 117 | 117 | 76 | 61 | 536 |
| Gauteng | 277 | 263 | 423 | 482 | 663 | 2,108 |
| Western Cape | 273 | 170 | 214 | 360 | 451 | 1,468 |
Public schools with a quintile recorded in the DBE EMIS Q3 2025 extract. Independent schools are excluded — the quintile system allocates government funding to public schools. Schools with no quintile on record are not counted. "Ranked Q1–Q3" is the national no-fee designation; "no-fee" is what EMIS records the school as charging, which is higher wherever a province has extended no-fee status to Q4 and Q5 schools. Mpumalanga records no fee status, so no figure is shown for it. A province's mix reflects the poverty profile of its communities, not how its schools perform.
The quintile mix looks completely different depending on where you live, because it follows the poverty profile of each province's communities. Limpopo has the highest proportion of quintile-ranked public schools in the no-fee band, at 97%; Western Cape the lowest, at 45%. Nationally, 18,521 of 22,215 quintile-ranked public schools are Quintile 1 to 3. Read the low figures carefully, though: they count the Q1–Q3 ranking, not what schools actually charge. Gauteng ranks only 46% of its public schools Q1–Q3, but because the province has declared so many Q4 and Q5 schools no-fee, 68% of them are recorded as charging no fees. These counts come from the DBE EMIS Q3 2025 extract and cover public schools with a quintile on record.
What quintiles do NOT tell you
A school's quintile reflects its community's economic circumstances, not the quality of teaching, the dedication of educators, or outcomes for learners. A Quintile 1 school may have exceptional educators and strong community support. A Quintile 5 school faces its own pressures. Nor is a quintile a guide to what a fee-charging school costs: Quintile 4 and 5 schools set their own fees, and two Quintile 5 schools in the same suburb can differ by tens of thousands of rand a year. On SchoolSeek, peer percentile rankings are always calculated within quintile groups: a school's position only means something compared to schools in the same quintile, phase, and province. Our compare tool lets you place any schools side by side, but a high pass rate at a Q1 school and a high pass rate at a Q5 school reflect very different circumstances.
How do I find out a school's quintile?
Look up a school's quintile
Search by name to see its quintile, fee status and full profile.
Public school profiles on SchoolSeek show the quintile and the recorded fee status, taken straight from the DBE EMIS dataset — search for the school by name, or browse by province and suburb. You can also filter by quintile when finding schools near an address. Two caveats worth knowing. EMIS is refreshed once a year, so a recent reclassification may not show yet, and 564 public schools have no quintile recorded at all, where we show "Data not available" rather than guess. Fee status is patchier still: one province records none of it, so an absent no-fee flag is not the same as a school that charges. For anything that affects what you will pay, confirm the current position with the school directly.
How do quintiles apply to independent schools?
Independent (private) schools are not assigned a quintile. The classification exists to allocate government funding to public schools, and independent schools are funded through fees, with some receiving a partial subsidy on a different basis. A small number of independent schools nonetheless carry a quintile value in the EMIS record. We do not know why in each case, and it does not reflect a current classification, so SchoolSeek does not display it: independent school profiles show "Quintile N/A". For the learner-educator comparison, independent schools form their own peer group rather than being placed in a quintile band.
Is the quintile system changing?
It may. The Department of Basic Education has said for several years that it is reviewing the quintile system, and ministers have floated replacing the five bands with a simpler two-category split between no-fee and fee-charging schools. The long-standing criticism is that ranking a school by its surrounding area misclassifies schools whose enrolled learners are poorer, or better off, than the neighbourhood around them. Nothing has replaced the system yet: the five quintiles remain in force, and the funding targets for 2026 were gazetted under the existing framework in February 2026. What has changed recently is the money rather than the structure. Gauteng cut its Quintile 5 allocation from R879 to the R315 national target from April 2026, affecting roughly 750 schools, and several of them have raised fees in response. We update this guide when the funding norms are re-gazetted.
Sources
- South African Schools Act 84 of 1996 (Sections 39–41 — no-fee schools and fee exemptions)
- National Norms and Standards for School Funding — GN 2362, Government Gazette No. 19347, 12 October 1998
- Amended National Norms and Standards for School Funding — GN 869, Government Gazette No. 29179, 31 August 2006
- Amended National Norms and Standards for School Funding: national table of targets for the school allocation 2026–2028 — GN 7160, Government Gazette No. 54180, 20 February 2026
- Department of Basic Education — EMIS Q3 2025 national extract
Check a school's quintile
Every public school profile shows its quintile and no-fee status, straight from the official EMIS record. Find schools near your address, or browse by province.
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Data sourced from the Department of Basic Education EMIS database. Read our full methodology