SA-SAMA - FAQ and Tips

SA-SAMS is an acronym for the South African School and Administration Management System. This electronically integrated application is cost effective, user-friendly and offers many varied uses and advantages to schools.

SA-SAMS has a strong EMIS focus to assist schools in the completion of the Annual School Survey and therefore also meets the identified needs of the Education Department, at Circuit, District and Provincial levels in the gathering of data from schools that informs decision making at all of these levels.

Many schools were using different management applications for different school functions e.g. schools were using a financial package to control the school finances, a separate timetabling package to do timetables and class lists were being manually generated. This resulted in the same data being input into three or more separate systems and all these systems needed to be updated every time a change occurred.

SA-SAMS was therefore developed to provide schools with a cost effective, easy to use and fully integrated computer solution containing all aspects of school management requirements. It also incorporates a Timetabling Assistant to assist the schools with the complicated task of allocating educators to subjects to classes.

The Western Cape Education Department's schools use the Central Education Management Information System (CEMIS) to collect data. Schools who opt to use SA-SAMS (offline tool), must maintain both systems; CEMIS and SA-SAMS.

1. Change your password on a regular basis i.e. monthly or immediately when you suspect that someone knows your password.
2. Never write your password down.
3. Create a password which is difficult to break by using a combination of capital and lower case letters, numbers and symbols.
4. Create a password that is 8-12 characters long.

Modules: There are numerous documents placed on the modules' page that you may download and use as a source of reference.

Tips: There are also TIPS that you can view or download that will assist you (see below).

Ask a question: If you have not found what you are looking for, then please click on the “Give Feedback” tab (right-hand side of your screen) to ask a question. When you use the “Give feedback” tab, please ensure that you include “SA-SAMS” in the subject field.