Daily Attendance Register for a South African Crèche

The attendance register is not paperwork you file and forget. It is the record your monthly subsidy claim is built on. At R24 per child per day attended, every unmarked day for a child holding an approved subsidised place is money the centre does not get back. Here is what a correct one looks like.

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What it is

The daily attendance register is the record of which learners were physically at the centre on each day of the month. It is marked every morning, by name, by the practitioner in charge of that group.

It is also the record your subsidy is paid on. The ECD subsidy is R24 per child per day attended. Your monthly claim to the district is built from this register and checked against it. A day that is not marked is a day that cannot be claimed for that child. Ask your district ECD official what goes with the register when you submit the monthly claim.

A register that is complete, initialled and signed does not hold your claim up. One with blank columns, pencil marks and painted-over corrections gets questioned, and questioning takes months.

Who asks for it

Your provincial education department. ECD moved from the Department of Social Development to the Department of Basic Education on 1 April 2022. The person who asks for your register is the district ECD official at your provincial education district office, and the same register supports the monthly subsidy claim you send to that office. If anyone tells you to take your register to the social development office, they are working off old information.

The Children's Act 38 of 2005 sits underneath this. A facility caring for more than six children who are not its own must register as a partial care facility, and a registered facility has to keep proper records of the children in its care. The attendance register is the daily part of that record.

Two other people ask for it, for different reasons. Your bookkeeper or auditor uses it to check that fee income and subsidy income match the children who were actually there. Your board or management committee uses it to see real attendance against the roll, which is usually lower than the roll suggests.

What must appear on it

There is no prescribed government register form. This is the centre's own record. These are the things an official expects to find on it.
Centre name, written exactly as it appears on your registration certificate.
EMIS number and partial care registration number, where these have been issued to the centre. If the centre is still in the registration process, write the reference number of the application.
Month and year written in full. "May 2026", not "05/26".
Class or age group, and the name of the practitioner responsible for that group.
Full name and surname of every learner on the roll, in one fixed order that does not change during the month. Alphabetical by surname is easiest for an official to check.
Date of birth next to each name. This is how an official confirms the child belongs in that age group.
One column for every day the centre is open that month, dated. A crèche is not a school, so count the days you actually operate, including through the June and December holidays. Public holidays and closure days must be shown and marked as such, not left blank.
A mark for each learner on each day. P for present, A for absent. One symbol, used the same way for the whole month.
A daily total row showing how many learners were present that day.
A per-learner total at the end of each row: days present and days absent for the month.
An indication of which learners hold an approved subsidised place, because the subsidy is paid on approved places and not on everyone on the roll.
The initials of the practitioner who marked the register, entered in the column for that day.
A signed and dated certification at the bottom by the principal that the register is a true and correct record.
A space for the district official to sign and date when they verify it.
Corrections made in ink: one line through the error, the correct mark next to it, initialled and dated. No correction fluid and no pencil.

A filled-in example

Worked example. Fictional centre, fictional learners, illustrative EMIS number. The centre was open on 20 days in May 2026, because 1 May is a public holiday.

Centre name	Little Blessings Educare Centre, Kabokweni	Month	May 2026
EMIS number	999999999 (example only, not a real EMIS number)	Class or age group	Pre-Grade R, 4 to 5 years
Practitioner responsible	Ms T. Mabaso	Number on roll	6
Approved subsidised places	4	Days open this month	20 (1 May is a public holiday)

Learner	Date of birth	Sub	1	4	5	6	7	8	11	12	13	14	15	18	19	20	21	22	25	26	27	28	29	Present	Absent
Mkhize, Ayanda	12/03/2021	Y	PH	P	P	P	P	P	P	P	PA	A	P	P	P	P	P	P	P	P	P	P	P	18	2
Mnisi, Anele	30/05/2021	Y	PH	P	P	P	P	P	P	P	P	P	P	P	P	P	P	P	P	P	A	P	P	19	1
Mahlangu, Naledi	22/11/2020	N	PH	P	P	P	P	P	P	P	P	P	P	P	P	P	P	P	P	P	P	P	P	20	0
Nkosi, Sizwe	09/01/2021	Y	PH	P	P	P	P	P	P	P	P	P	P	P	A	A	A	P	P	P	P	P	P	17	3
Sithole, Lethabo	04/07/2021	Y	PH	A	P	P	P	P	P	P	P	P	P	P	P	P	P	P	P	P	P	P	P	19	1
van Wyk, Chloe	17/02/2021	N	PH	P	P	A	A	P	P	P	P	P	P	P	P	P	P	P	P	P	P	P	P	18	2
Number present on the day			PH	5	6	5	5	6	6	6	5	5	6	6	5	5	5	6	6	6	5	6	6	111	9
Practitioner initials			-	TM	TM	TM	TM	TM	TM	TM	TM	TM	TM	TM	TM	TM	TM	TM	TM	TM	TM	TM	TM

Key. P = present. A = absent. PH = public holiday. Sub = holds an approved subsidised place.

The correction on 13 May. Ayanda Mkhize was marked P at 08:00 and her mother phoned at 08:40 to say she was at the clinic. The P has one line through it, the A is written next to it, and the practitioner initialled and dated the change in the margin: TM 13/05/2026. The wrong mark is still readable. That is the point.

What gets claimed. Only the four learners holding approved subsidised places count towards the subsidy. Ayanda 18 days, Anele 19 days, Sizwe 17 days, Lethabo 19 days. That is 73 child days attended. As an illustration, 73 x R24 = R1 752 for May 2026. Provinces differ in how they turn attendance into a payment. Some count days attended. Some pay on approved places against a set number of programme days and check the register against that. Ask your district ECD official which applies to your centre before you budget on a figure. Naledi and Chloe are full fee paying, and their attendance is still marked every day because the register is also the centre's enrolment record.

Certification at the bottom of the page.

I certify that this register is a true and correct record of the learners who attended this centre on the days marked.
Practitioner T. Mabaso Signed 29/05/2026	Principal N. Shabangu Signed 29/05/2026	District official Name, signature and date entered at verification

Names, dates and amounts are invented. Use your own centre's details.

What happens at inspection if you do not have it

The district ECD official arrives for a monitoring visit, often with little notice. The official usually asks for the current month's register and the months before it, so keep the year's registers where you can reach them in a minute. The second request is a headcount. The official counts the children in the room and compares that number to your daily total for that day.

If the register is missing or not up to date, the usual outcome is not closure. You get a written finding or compliance notice with a date by which the records must be in order. You produce them by that date and the matter closes. Ask the official to write the date on the notice before they leave, and keep your copy. That part is manageable.

The subsidy is where the real money goes. A month you cannot evidence is a month the district can question. A district can hold back or reduce payment for periods where the register does not support the claim, and it can ask for repayment of what was already paid. On 40 subsidised children, one unclaimable month of 20 days open is 800 child days. At R24 that is R19 200. Provinces differ in how attendance turns into a payment, so ask your district ECD official how a gap would be treated at your centre.

The finding that does the most damage is a headcount mismatch. If your register says 62 present and 44 children are in the building with no absence marks, the official does not only correct that day. It triggers a look back over previous months, and an inflated register read as a deliberate overclaim moves the matter from a compliance question to a fraud question. That can end the subsidy agreement and lead to a demand for repayment. So mark absent children absent. The R24 you lose on one absent child is far cheaper than the alternative.

Correction fluid is the other thing officials notice immediately. Correction fluid tells an official the record was changed after the day it was marked, and they cannot see what it said before. That is enough to have the whole month questioned. One line through the error, the correct mark beside it, initialled and dated. A visible correction is trusted. A hidden one is not.

Keep the signed printed register at the centre. If you mark attendance on a phone, print and sign the month when it closes. An official arriving without notice needs the record in front of them, in the building.

Two practical points. Do not throw away last year's registers, because subsidy verification often looks back across a full financial year, so box them by year and keep them at the centre. And treat the register as what it is under POPIA, a record of children's personal information, so keep it in a locked office or cupboard and never photograph a full page into a parents' WhatsApp group.

Common questions

Do I claim the subsidy for a child who was booked in but did not come?

No. The subsidy is R24 per child per day attended, not per day enrolled. An absent child is marked A and that day is not claimed. Marking an absent child present to protect the income is an overclaim. It puts the subsidy agreement at risk and it can lead to a demand for repayment.

Can I fill in the whole week's register on Friday?

No. Mark it at the start of each day, from the children in front of you. A week filled in at once is the register that fails a headcount check, because you are working from memory. It also destroys the daily initials that show who marked each day.

Does the parent sign the attendance register?

The attendance register is marked and initialled by the practitioner and certified by the principal. Many districts also want a separate sign-in and sign-out book that the adult dropping off and collecting signs. Ask your district ECD official which they expect and keep both if you are not sure.

A child on my roll has not come for three weeks. What do I mark?

Mark A every day and put the follow-up to the parent in writing. If the child has left, record the last date attended, note the withdrawal and take the name off the roll from that date. Holding an inactive child on the roll to protect a subsidised place is the kind of thing a verification visit finds.

Is the subsidy still R17 per child per day?

No. It went to R24 per child per day attended on 1 April 2025. It is means-tested and the number of subsidised places you get is capped by your provincial allocation, so R24 applies to your approved subsidised places, not to every child on your roll.

Zande takes the register on a phone each morning and prints this same monthly grid with the daily totals and the subsidised days already added up, ready to sign and keep at the centre.

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