{"id":80402,"date":"2020-02-15T09:38:26","date_gmt":"2020-02-15T09:38:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mediahack.co.za\/?p=80402"},"modified":"2025-11-17T17:44:13","modified_gmt":"2025-11-17T17:44:13","slug":"how-many-schools-in-south-africa-have-internet-access","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/2020\/02\/15\/how-many-schools-in-south-africa-have-internet-access\/","title":{"rendered":"How many schools in South Africa have internet access?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

How many of South Africa\u2019s public schools are connected to the internet?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You\u2019d think this would be an easy question to answer. But, it isn\u2019t. The answer you get depends on the source.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For example, in a\u00a0presentation to parliament<\/a>\u00a0in March, the Department of Basic Education said that 17,517 schools were connected to the internet \u2013 or 71% of schools. But, the most recent Neims report (August 2019) states that, at most, 11,465 of South Africa\u2019s public schools have access to the internet \u2013 that\u2019s 49% of the public schools.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The Niems report also states that 4,695 schools have access for teaching and learning \u2013 that\u2019s about 20% of schools \u2013 and 6,770 schools have internet for admin purposes \u2013 that\u2019s 29%.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The department appears to add the schools with teaching and admin together to get the total number of schools.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you go back 5 years to the 2014 Niems report, it would appear that since then only 1,076 additional public schools have been connected to the internet, most of them for admin purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

What is the Neims report?<\/em><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Niems is the National Education Infrastructure Management System, an electronic planning and management tool was set up in 2007 to allow for ‘real-time’ access to information about the condition of infrastructure and facilities at South Africa\u2019s public schools. Every year or so the Department of Basic Education releases a report on school infrastructure drawn from Niems and makes it available on its\u00a0website<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

You\u2019d think Niems reports would be a reliable source of information, right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maybe not, because they don\u2019t appear to have taken into account internet connectivity provided to schools by cell phone network operators since 2014.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According the department’s March presentation, 4,697 schools have been connected by Vodacom, MTN, CellC and Liquid Telecoms\/Neotel since 2014. The actual total depends on where you look and may be as high as 4,831.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

In 2014 the government\u2019s Independent Communications Authority (Icasa) put in place Universal Service and Access Obligations (USAO) for network operators which required them to provide ICT equipment and internet connectivity to public schools. The target was 5,250 schools shared between Vodacom, MTN, Cell C and Neotel\/Liquid Telecoms. So the cell operators are close to their target number.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Also the Department of Post and Telecommunications through the Universal Service and Access Agency of SA has connected 555 schools, according to a DBE presentation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In spreadsheets submitted in response to parliamentary questions in 2016 and April 2020 listing the schools provided with internet access by the cell networks, we counted 4,825 schools. So, if you add this number to the USAASA schools you get 5,380 additional schools that have been connected to the internet since 2014.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

That means around 15,769 schools are connected to the internet at present \u2013 that\u2019s quite a big difference from the 11,465 in the 2019 Niems report. And it means that around 68% of schools are connected to the internet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But it’s still 1,745 schools short of the 17,514 schools the DBE said were connected. Why is there such a big difference?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The department was clearly not talking about just public schools in its presentation because it stated the total number of schools as 24,775. That\u2019s around 1,500 more schools than the 23,258 public schools in the 2019 Niems report, and the 23,076 in the latest School Realities Report and the 23,313 public schools in the 2019 schools masterlist. See, it\u2019s even hard to pin down the total number of public schools in the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So the 17,514 schools the department said are connected to the internet must include independent schools.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Only 8% of those schools have high-speed connectivity, according to the department’s presentation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, from what we can ascertain from the Niems reports and documents submitted in parliament by the Department of Basic Education, it seems that roughly two-thirds of SA\u2019s public schools are connected to the internet, but most of them have low-speed connectivity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How many schools in South Africa have access to the internet? Using data from a number of different sources, including official documents and Parliamentary presentations, we tried to establish exactly how many schools are connected. We then used that data to visualise the change in internet connectivity in schools from 2014 to\u00a0 2019.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":80596,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,446,1387],"tags":[],"newsletter-post":[],"site":[],"class_list":["post-80402","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-education","category-news","category-the-outlier"],"acf":{"big_number":null,"big_number_caption":null,"big_number_link":null,"big_number_background":null,"big_number_text_colour":null,"big_number_icon":null,"big_number_wide":null,"featured_chart":null,"flourish_chart_id":null,"flourish_sub_title":null,"flourish_chart_width":null,"is_newsletter_post":null,"post_style":null,"show_on_front":null,"link_through":null,"chart_url":null,"background_colour":null,"text_colour":null},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80402","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=80402"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80402\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":86668,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80402\/revisions\/86668"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/80596"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80402"},{"taxonomy":"newsletter-post","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newsletter-post?post=80402"},{"taxonomy":"site","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/site?post=80402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}