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 visitors give us no personal information: there are no visitor accounts and browsing is not tied to an identity. We do hold information about schools, and the details of school staff who claim or update a listing; both are described 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 a server we rent and manage ourselves, 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].
Information we hold about schools
SchoolSeek publishes a page for every school listed as open, or about to open, on the Department of Basic Education's national school list. For each school we hold what that list gives: name, EMIS number, street and postal address, suburb and town, map position, district, municipality and ward, phase, sector, type of school, urban or rural, quintile, fee status, registration date, phone number, email address where the list has one, and learner and educator numbers. We also hold learner and educator numbers for earlier years, National Senior Certificate results (overall and by subject) for schools that write it, the exam body, and for Western Cape schools the language of instruction. Almost all of this comes from documents the national and provincial education departments publish: the national EMIS school list, the lists of earlier years, the National Senior Certificate school reports, the no-fee school lists and provincial school lists. We use these published records and do not ask each school. A few items come from elsewhere: which independent schools write IEB or Cambridge exams (from published lists and the schools' own websites), a small number of map positions found from the school's address using OpenStreetMap, and corrections that people report and we check. We work out some things ourselves: the learner-educator ratio, how a school's figures compare with similar schools, nearby schools, and distances to nearby centres. We publish this on the school's page so that parents can find and compare schools. Anyone can read it, including search engines. We do not publish educator numbers for earlier years. We publish an email address only where the Department's list gives one or the school has given us one. Where a school has given us information itself, the page marks it "Provided by the school". A school does not have to give us anything, and no law requires us to collect this. SchoolSeek is run by a company, Lefty23 (Pty) Ltd. Today it is free for parents and for schools, and any advertising is labelled. This information is about schools, not about learners. We hold no personal information about learners or educators. The only details about staff are those a school representative gives us (see School Representative Data above), such as a principal's name. POPIA also protects information about organisations such as schools. We rely on our legitimate interest, and that of parents, in an accurate public directory of schools (POPIA section 11(1)(f)), and most of the information comes from public records (section 12(2)(a)). See What a school can ask us to do 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 to tell a school about its own page, to send a sign-in link, to send a confirmation link, and to answer replies. A school that has never contacted us may get one email from us asking whether we may email it about its page. We send it once, only to an address published for the school, never to a personal mailbox such as Gmail, and we say in it where we found the address. If the school does not reply, we take that as a no and do not ask again. A person updating a school's page in the portal can tick a box asking us to email the address they signed in with about that page: a reminder each term to check the details, a note when something needs attention, news of new SchoolSeek features for schools, and the occasional request, no more than one email a month. The box is not ticked for them. We record who ticked it, when, and the wording they agreed to. We email a school's address when someone asks for a sign-in link on its page, when someone sends us an update in the school's name (we send a link to confirm it), and when we answer a message. We also email the person who sent an update, to tell them what happened to it. 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.
What a school can ask us to do
A school can ask us, at no charge, what information we hold about it and where we got it. A school can ask us, at no charge, to correct anything on its page that is wrong. Use the "Report a correction" link on the page or email [email protected]. We check each request against the source or with the school before we change the page. Figures that come from the Department, such as learner numbers and quintile, must be corrected through the Department's EMIS; where a figure is clearly wrong we add a note to the page and correct it where we can confirm the right figure. A school can object to how we use its information; we will consider the objection and reply with our reasons. A school can ask us to stop emailing it, and we will. We do not remove a school's whole page only because the school asks, because the Department's list is public and the page is factual. We do remove any individual's personal details on request. We answer within 30 days. A school that is unhappy with our answer may complain to the Information Regulator: [email protected], 010 023 5200, Woodmead North Office Park, 54 Maxwell Drive, Woodmead, Johannesburg, 2191.
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 home and work addresses you type into the school finder, and the map location found for your home address (so /shortlist/ can show distances without looking it up again); the address you type into the commute planner or the map and compare tools (so you don't have to retype it on other school profiles); your saved-schools list (each school's name, area, province, phase and map location); an in-progress draft of a school-update form (school details only, never your name, email, or role); and, for school staff who sign in to the portal, the time-limited sign-in token. The saved copy stays in your browser, and we cannot read your local storage. Your comparison list is kept only in the open page and is cleared when you close it. Clearing your browser's site data for schoolseek.co.za removes everything above completely. Searching with an address does send information over the internet, as described in Finding schools near you below.
Finding schools near you
When you search by address, the address you type (and, where address suggestions appear, the text as you type it) is sent to OpenStreetMap's Nominatim service, which returns its map coordinates. If you use 'Use my current location' instead, your phone or browser supplies the coordinates and no address is looked up. To list nearby schools, your browser then sends an approximate home location, rounded to about 1 km, to SchoolSeek's server, together with an approximate work location if you added one, the search radius, and any filters you chose. The server returns the schools in that area, and the exact distances are worked out on your device, so the finder itself does not send us your precise location. When you start a search from the homepage, the address or location is handed to the finder inside your browser, in this tab's history, rather than placed in the page's link. If you open a finder link that does contain an address or location (for example one shared from elsewhere), it is sent to our server as part of that web address and removed from the address bar once the finder has read it. Addresses and locations in page links are excluded from our analytics. Opening a shortlist link someone shared with you asks SchoolSeek's server for those schools' public details.
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 and its claims database run on a server in Germany that we rent from Hetzner. Our visitor statistics and server logs are kept on a second Hetzner server in Finland. Cloudflare sits in front of the site as edge cache and Web Application Firewall (WAF). Cloudflare may process certain technical data (such as IP addresses) as part of delivering the website. Map tiles are served by OpenStreetMap contributors, and addresses you search for are looked up with OpenStreetMap's Nominatim geocoding service, which receives the address you type and the technical details of the request (such as your IP address) and is run by the OpenStreetMap Foundation outside South Africa. Claim and school-update submissions pass through a Cloudflare Worker into our claims database, which runs on a server we rent and manage ourselves. 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. Replies to our emails also pass through Resend. Email sent to our addresses is received by Cloudflare and forwarded to a Gmail mailbox (Google) that we use to read it. Email that reaches our dashboard is checked for spam and automatic messages by TypeSafe, which receives the subject and the start of the message text, but not the sender's email address. Details a school asks us to publish are also checked by TypeSafe, minus contact details, before a person reviews them. When we ask for a suggested reply to an email, Anthropic (the maker of Claude) receives the message, the sender's email address and the name of the school it concerns. A person always reads, edits and sends the reply; nothing is sent automatically. Information schools give us is also stored in a private GitHub repository, from which the site is built. Backups of the claims database are kept in Cloudflare's storage service. Hetzner, Cloudflare, Resend, Google, TypeSafe, Anthropic and GitHub are outside South Africa, so the claims database, its backups, school-provided information and our email are held outside South Africa, and some data (IP addresses, and for portal sign-ins your email address) is processed there. We use Hetzner, Cloudflare and Resend under their standard data processing terms, which commit them to protection comparable to POPIA. We recommend reviewing the privacy policies of Hetzner, Cloudflare, OpenStreetMap (including Nominatim), Resend, Google, TypeSafe, Anthropic and GitHub 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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