By Katlego Sekhu
A frustrated parent called the station yesterday to voice her concerns. She has two kids, one going to Grade 1 and the other to Grade 8 next year, and none of them have found placement.
More parents expressed their frustrations about their children struggling to find space in schools around Gauteng.
The MEC of Education in the province Panyaza Lesufi joined Thomas and Skhumba to answer some questions and explain how the process works.
“Let’s take a school which has a population of 1300 learners. When we opened for online registrations, we got more than 2000 applications, and from those applications, we can only take 280 learners,” he explains.
“It’s not an issue of we can’t take learners, but you can’t take the entire school which has the population of learners from Grade 8 to Garde 12 of 1400 and convert it into a grade 8 school only.”
The criteria
There are specific criteria that they use for admission in schools.
“So, we use criteria – the one that is closer to the school; the second one is if you have a child in that school. The third is the curriculum. The fourth is the nature of the school.
“People are complaining that we should go back to the old system. Before you even enter the gate to fill the forms, the old system told you that the school is full.
“And if you are lucky to get a form, and your surname is Skhumba, they take your form and put it at the bottom, and if you are Van Rooyen, they put your form on top.
“Fourthly, if you don’t have money, you will not go to any school because they will want a certain deposit before they can even take your application.
“The last part, schools should have something called open day, and we have gotten rid of all those things,” he explains.
Everyone can apply
Furthermore, Mr. Lesufi says that everyone is welcome to apply, and they are working on fixing the problem of space in schools.
“Everyone can now apply at the same time, and the reality is, people prefer certain schools. In Gauteng, there’s no need for us to build an extra school, except where there are new developments. The schools that are preferred, unfortunately, are fewer than available schools,” he said.
“What we are doing now Is that we’re giving a preferred school a certain amount of money to build extra classrooms because people want to go there. We have extended the placement periods,” he said.
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