Why we use peer comparisons instead of rankings
Research into school rating systems worldwide — including Niche.com, GreatSchools.org, and Ofsted — shows that single-number scores and letter grades primarily measure community wealth, not school quality. A school's overall score can often be predicted with high accuracy from household income alone. To avoid reinforcing this pattern, SchoolSeek uses contextual peer comparisons that show how a school compares to similar schools.
What is a peer group?
A peer group consists of schools that share the same quintile, phase (primary, secondary, or combined), and province. This means a Quintile 2 primary school in the Western Cape is compared only to other Quintile 2 primary schools in the Western Cape. This approach ensures schools are measured against others facing similar resource constraints and serving similar communities.
How percentiles work
Within each peer group, we calculate where a school falls for measurable indicators like the learner-to-educator ratio. If a school has "smaller classes than 80% of similar schools" for this ratio, it means 80% of schools in the same peer group have a higher (less favourable) ratio. The percentile is displayed as a visual bar showing the school's position among its peers.
What we measure — and what we cannot
With current EMIS data, we can compare learner-to-educator ratios within peer groups. This is a resource indicator — it tells you about class sizes, not about teaching quality. We do not have access to matric results, learner progress data, or parent satisfaction surveys at this stage. As more data becomes available, we plan to add outcome-based comparisons (like matric pass rates) alongside resource indicators.
Small peer groups
Some peer groups have fewer than 5 schools. When this happens, the percentile comparison is less statistically meaningful, and we flag it with a note. A school being "in the top 20%" of a 3-school group tells you less than the same position in a 50-school group.
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Data sourced from the Department of Basic Education EMIS database. Read our full methodology