Overview
SchoolSeek ("we", "us", "our") is committed to protecting your privacy in accordance with the Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA) of South Africa. This privacy policy explains what information we collect, how we use it, and your rights regarding your personal data. Most of SchoolSeek needs no personal information at all: there are no visitor accounts and browsing is not tied to an identity. The one exception is school staff who claim or update a school listing, whose details we store in our own claims database. That is described in School Representative Data below.
Information We Collect
SchoolSeek collects minimal information. We use privacy-focused analytics (Umami) to understand how visitors use the site — this collects anonymised, aggregate data such as page views, referral sources, and device types. No cookies are used for tracking, and no personally identifiable information is collected through analytics. No account or personally identifiable information is required or stored. If you contact us via our contact page, you may voluntarily provide your name and email address. This information is used solely to respond to your enquiry and is not shared with third parties.
School Representative Data
When a school staff member submits updates to their school's listing, through our claim form or the self-serve portal, we process only the personal information they choose to share (typically a name, role, and school email address), solely to verify the request is genuine and to manage the update. Submissions are stored in our claims database, which runs on our own server, not a third-party form or workflow tool. If you sign in to the portal, we send the sign-in link and any notifications through our email provider, Resend; signing in stores your email address and a time-limited token, and nothing else. There is no password. The dashboard used to review and publish submissions is restricted to SchoolSeek staff and sits behind Cloudflare Access. We rely on your consent to process your details, and you can withdraw it at any time. We keep a minimal verification record (who submitted what, and when) for as long as that content is published, because we have a legitimate interest in being able to show a submission was genuine (POPIA section 11(1)(f)). Withdrawal removes everything except that record. You may request access, correction, or deletion at any time by contacting [email protected].
School Data
The school information displayed on SchoolSeek comes from the Department of Basic Education's publicly available EMIS dataset. This data relates to institutions, not individuals. We do not collect, store, or display personal information about learners, educators, or school staff, beyond what school representatives voluntarily provide when submitting an update to their listing (see School Representative Data above). We do hold one contact email address per school, which is an address for the institution rather than for a named person; see School contact details below.
School contact details
So that we can tell a school that its page exists, we hold one email address per school, together with a note of where we got it. Those addresses come from public information: the school directories published by the provincial education departments, the national EMIS register, contact details a school publishes itself, and addresses worked out from the address pattern a provincial department publishes for its own schools. Where a school gives us a better address, we use that one instead. We use these addresses only to tell a school about its own page and to answer replies. We keep an outreach log recording which school we emailed, at which address, when, and whether the message was delivered, so that we do not contact the same school twice over and can show what was sent. Any school can tell us to stop, by replying to one of our emails with the word stop or by writing to [email protected]. We record that request against the school and do not email it again.
Data Accuracy & Disclaimer
SchoolSeek is an independent platform and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or operated by the South African Department of Basic Education, any provincial education department, or any government agency. While we take reasonable steps to ensure the accuracy of information on this site, all official statistics are sourced from publicly available government datasets and may contain errors, omissions, or outdated information. Some school profiles also include details supplied directly by the school (contact information, fees, curriculum, and similar): we confirm these requests genuinely come from the school before publishing them, but we do not independently fact-check their content, and they are clearly marked "Provided by the school" wherever they appear. School profiles, statistics, and comparisons are provided for informational purposes only and should not be the sole basis for any decision regarding school selection. We recommend contacting schools directly to verify any information before making decisions. To the fullest extent South African law allows, we are not liable for losses arising from reliance on information published here. Nothing here limits liability that cannot lawfully be limited.
Cookies & Tracking
SchoolSeek does not use tracking cookies. Our analytics solution (Umami) is cookieless and compliant with POPIA, GDPR, and similar privacy regulations. We do not use third-party advertising trackers, social media pixels, or remarketing tools. Your browsing activity on SchoolSeek is not tracked across other websites.
Local Storage
Some features save information in your own browser's local storage so they work better on repeat visits: the address you type into the commute planner or map/compare tools (so you don't have to retype it on other school profiles), an in-progress draft of a school-update form (school details only — never your name, email, or role), and your school comparison list. This information never leaves your device — it is not transmitted to SchoolSeek or anyone else, and we cannot see it. Clearing your browser's site data for schoolseek.co.za removes it completely.
Your Rights Under POPIA
Under POPIA, you have the right to: request access to any personal information we hold about you; request correction or deletion of your personal information; object to the processing of your personal information; and lodge a complaint with the Information Regulator. To exercise any of these rights, email [email protected] with enough detail for us to find your records. We respond within 30 days. Access and correction requests may be made on the Information Regulator's Form 2 and Form 3, but a plain email is fine. If you are unhappy with our response you may complain to the Information Regulator.
Third-Party Services
SchoolSeek is hosted on a Dokploy-managed Docker container, with Cloudflare acting as edge cache and Web Application Firewall (WAF) in front. Cloudflare may process certain technical data (such as IP addresses) as part of delivering the website. Map tiles are served by OpenStreetMap contributors. Claim and school-update submissions pass through a Cloudflare Worker into our claims database, which runs on our own server. Sign-in links and notifications for the self-serve portal are sent through our email provider, Resend. The dashboard used to review and publish submissions is restricted to SchoolSeek staff and sits behind Cloudflare Access. Cloudflare and Resend are international providers, so some data (IP addresses, and for portal sign-ins your email address) is processed on servers outside South Africa. We use them under their standard data processing terms, which commit them to protection comparable to POPIA. We recommend reviewing the privacy policies of Cloudflare, OpenStreetMap, and Resend for details on their data handling practices.
Changes to This Policy
We may update this privacy policy from time to time. Any changes will be reflected on this page with an updated effective date. We encourage you to review this policy periodically.
Contact
If you have questions about this privacy policy or wish to exercise your POPIA rights, email [email protected]. General questions can also be sent through our contact page. SchoolSeek is operated by Lefty23 (Pty) Ltd, registration number 2026/706220/07, a private company registered in South Africa and based in Cape Town; its postal address is available on request. Under POPIA the company is the responsible party for the personal information on this site. Its Information Officer is the director of Lefty23 (Pty) Ltd, registered with the Information Regulator under registration 2026-066332 and reachable at [email protected], which is the address on that registration. Our PAIA manual, which sets out how to request access to records we hold, is published at https://lefty23.co.za/paia/ and is reproduced on this site at /paia-manual/. If you are unhappy with our response you may complain to the Information Regulator (South Africa), [email protected].
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