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WENDY MOTHATA
The Gauteng Education Department has placed 87.71% of Grade 1 and 8 learners who had applied for admission through the online admissions placement process.
Education MEC Matome Chiloane was briefing the media on the progress of 2023 online admissions and learner placement on Sunday at Parktown Boys, in Johannesburg
He said that parents who failed to accept placement offers for their children were delaying the process.
“One of the things that is clogging the system is that we got 5,485 applicants who have received offers but whose parents have not accepted them, and this delays the process. You find that a learner has been offered space in two or three different schools, and until they can accept that offer, the system will cover those spaces as filled.”
Chiloane said so far, 87.71% of applicants had been placed while 12.29% were not yet placed.
“We need parents to assist us by accepting offers in one of the places so they can free up the system and we can continue placing other learners. This has been one of the problems we are facing.”
“We had received 332477 unique applications for both grade 8 and 1 of those 157 697 were grade 1, and 174 780 were for grade 8. We have managed to please 87.7% of those learners so far.”
“Currently we are sitting with 35 897 (12.24%) for both grade 1 and grade 8 pupils awaiting to be placed which is 9 897 for grade 1 and 26 000 for grade 8, and we are still in the process to place them.”
Chiloane assured parents that they should not be worried that their children have not been placed.
“Parents should not be worried that they have not been placed as the time towards the end of the placement period is coming closer.”
The department said that those who will be appealing regarding where their children are placed, they will be considered.
“Those who will be eligible to object are those who will be transferred to schools that they would not have applied for. Those are appeals that will be considered. All objections will be judged on their merit.”
“The merit varies. You’ll find that we’ve placed your child in a school far from you, and there is no scholar transport or any other measure in place for your child to go to that school. Those are some of the merits we’ll be looking at. So they vary, it’s multiple factors…so we’ll be looking at every single objection with its own merit.”
“So with this process, we are looking to avail around 599 additional classrooms for primary schools and 698 additional classrooms for secondary schools. This isn’t only for high pressure schools that you see here, also other schools that might not necessarily be streamlined.”
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