AI helped free ‘trapped data’, improving school admissions

School admissions: It’s a problem that plagues public schools and makes headlines every single year in South Africa. Putting the right kids into the right schools isn’t just a problem for us, however, as it seems to be a worldwide issue.

At Dreamforce 2026 – Salesforce’s annual big bash – we sat in for a session involving the Harmony Public Schools system, which operates in Texas. The session was entitled “A New Era of K-12 Connection: Scale Personalization with AI” and it focuses on smart, AI-driven use of data to deal with many of Harmony’s roadblocks with a small team.

One big theme here, which was also a theme mentioned by CEO and co-founder of Salesforce, Marc Benioff in the opening keynote, is the concept of “trapped data” or “trapped potential”.

This is important and sometimes vital data that is needed to achieve results, which is inaccessible for whatever reason. Maybe it’s in an old operating or filing system. Maybe it’s locked to a piece of legacy software no one currently knows how to deal with. Maybe it’s formatted wrong or incompatible with the current way of working.

In the header image above, you can see an illustrative diagram showing how different kinds of data are their own islands, all sharing the same body of water, but all separate from one another and unable to be connected.

Whatever the reason for this trapped data, the use of AI can free it, make it accessible to be turned into usable information, and save a lot of time and money in the process.

Partly by freeing up this data through AI, Harmony Public Schools posted some impressive success metrics such as a 34 percent decrease in families declining their kids’ seats in schools and a 210 percent increase in volume of families being contacted and filling in applications.

From this, we were eager to know if lessons learnt in Texas could be applied to the situation in South Africa to help families here make sure their children have a secured spot in our schools. The joint Harmony and Salesforce team told us that, given that every school system is so unique, a local AI solution and experts would be needed to find out what works and what doesn’t.

Thankfully, given that Salesforce has such a notable presence in South Africa, we can see this happening in the future. Salesforce’s 1-1-1 philanthropic model also has mechanisms to assist schooling systems which may not be able to cover its help financially, which is great news for our often cash-strapped corners of government.

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