What you can verify

You can verify your educational qualifications on the National Learners’ Records Database (NLRD) at the South African Qualifications Authority (SAQA). If you are an employer, you can also confirm the qualifications of your employees on the database. If you check your own information, you receive the full record of what the NLRD holds concerning you.  When other parties verify your information as a learner, they must give an exact query (which qualification, institution and date). SAQA’s response is either “found” or “not found” concerning that information only.

Information currently available

• University achievements from 1986 to 2008 in full; partial information from 1965 to 1985; and a small amount of information from 1964 back to 1900.  (Information from 2009 and 2010 is currently being loaded, and can be verified against the unaudited dataset that is held separately from the NLRD itself.)
• Technikon achievements from 1999 to 2005.
• Senior Certificate achievements from 1992 to 2010.
• Achievements submitted by Education and Training Quality Assurance bodies (ETQAs).

How to request verifications

• To verify your own records, e-mail the following to the contact person indicated below:
  • full name
  • date of birth
  • identity number.
• To verify the records of another party (e.g. a job applicant or all the people on your staff): Third parties need to subscribe to the service first, by signing an agreement form.  They then receive the relevant Excel spreadsheet on which to make their request: individual for a few applicants, or bulk for 125 records or more (a “record” is a single qualification for a person, so a person with five qualifications has five records).  The following is entered on the relevant spreadsheet for each record to be verified: 
• full name
• identity number
• qualification achieved
• institution where qualification was obtained (e.g. university or technikon)
• date when qualification was obtained.

Timeframe

Own records (free service): One day to seven days.
Third-party verifications (clients that are not Government departments and other Public Service organisations): One to three days for individual verifications, one to four weeks for bulk verifications.

How much does it cost

The following fee structure applies to clients that are not Government departments and other Public Service organisations:

• Individual: R50 per person requested (for up to 124 records)
• Bulk: Up to 5000 records: R6000.  If you request 5000 records or more then the cost is R1,20 per record (using a specified data layout).  A further R6000 is charged if there are 125 or more Matric records in a bulk verification.

Forms to complete

For all third party verifications (bulk and individual), use the specified data layout, after signing the agreement. Obtain these by e-mailing the contact person.

Who to contact

Contact person: Phumzile Mtsweni
Tel. No.: 012 431-5010
Fax: 012 431-5051
email: verifications@saqa.org.za

If Ms Mtsweni is unavailable: Yvonne Shapiro
Tel. No.: 012 431-5050
Fax: 012 431-5051
email: yshapiro@saqa.org.za