2010 – SA-SAMS and LURITS

School Management Information Systems ( EMIS ) The Department of Basic Education (DBE) provides a package called SA-SAMS to schools to use on a voluntary basis only. Schools are allowed to use more advanced industry products of their own choice. The DBE does not compete with third party suppliers of School Management Information Systems. The DBE provide SA-SAMS to schools at no initial or annual licensing costs to ensure that all schools (not just well resourced schools) have an equal opportunity to access a computerized administration system. Schools are encouraged to use any product that meets the reporting requirements of provinces as provinces are the authorities on reporting requirements for their schools. Schools are mandated to use certain data exchange formats such as the learner tracking system format for learner data records. To ensure that third parties are not excluded, the DBE has provided a full specification for third party packages to send data to LURITS. The mandate is the Education Information policy which is attached. Is LURITS replacing School Administration?

• Definitely not; LURITS is a central national database system that works in conjunction with school administration systems.
• LURITS relies on school systems to send data to the central database.
• In fact LURITS cannot exist without school administration management systemsl.

Is the use of the LURITS upload utility compulsory for connected schools?

• It is a requirement at this stage to use the upload engine provided by SITA for the transport of files to and from within the school's Management Software.

Many districts enforce / claim that it is compulsory for their schools to use SASAMS.  What is the Department’s position on this?

• The Education Information Policy states that different software packages may be used in schools as long as they conform to the national standards and requirements.
• At this stage the national data requirements are the survey requirements and the interface with the LURITS system

How was the above communicated to Provincial level?

• The National Department of Education has sent a letter to all provinces reminding them of the policy that the SA-SAMS software is not compulsory.