The heat is on for the Gauteng Education Department as it rushes to place more than 35 000 learners in Grade 1 and Grade 8 over the next three days.
The automatic placement of learners for the 2023 schooling year will continue until Wednesday, November 30.
However, Gauteng Education MEC Matome Chiloane said 35 897 pupils still needed to be placed. These include 9897 Grade 1 learners and 26 000 Grade 8 learners.
Chiloane assured parents that there was no need to panic, saying that all was “under control” and they were trying their very best to ensure placements were completed by Wednesday.
“So far the process is on track to ensure we place all the applicants,” he said.
However, Chiloane said 5485 Gauteng parents who received offers of placement had not accepted these offers and that had been clogging up the system.
These include 1868 Grade 1 applicants and 3617 Grade 8 applicants.
“You will find that maybe the learner is offered place in two or three schools but until they accept, the system will consider the place at all offered schools on hold which clogs the system. We urge the parents to accept these offers so we can move ahead and offer placements to other children and free up the system,” Chiloane said.
He also reminded parents that they could only object or appeal a placement if their children had been placed in a school they did not agree to be transferred to.
“Parents and guardians are also reminded that all placement is subject to the priority of placement criteria and availability of space per school.
“Therefore, applicants that cannot be accommodated at the schools they applied to due to the schools having reached capacity, will receive transfer offers of placement at the next closest school with available space,” he said.
Gauteng received more than 300 000 unique applications for Grade 1 (157 697) Grade 8 (174 780) for the 2023 school year.
So far, 87.7% of learners have been placed.
The department also identified a number of high-pressure areas where schools received an overwhelming number of applications which exceeded the capacity of learners that they could afford to accommodate. These included 313 primary schools and about 234 secondary schools.
Education