Subscribe
  • Home
  • /
  • Broadband
  • /
  • Gauteng admissions site places majority of applicants

Gauteng admissions site places majority of applicants

Paula Gilbert
By Paula Gilbert, ITWeb telecoms editor.
Johannesburg, 09 Dec 2016
Gauteng education MEC Panyaza Lesufi says the online school registrations system recorded important lessons in 2016 and will be refined next year.
Gauteng education MEC Panyaza Lesufi says the online school registrations system recorded important lessons in 2016 and will be refined next year.

The Gauteng Department of Education (GDE) says it received over 310 000 online applications for learners in grades one and eight, and almost 74% of these learners have been placed in schools.

This through the online learner admissions Web site, introduced earlier this year, which required parents of leaners entering these grades in 2017 to use the portal for school placement.

The department received 310 404 applications via the online system ? at least 176 348 were for grade one and 136 056 are for grade eight. Over 229 000 learners in both grades have so far been placed in schools.

Gauteng education MEC Panyaza Lesufi released the State of Readiness for the 2017 Academic Year Report in Johannesburg this week, and said his department is ready for the coming school year.

Despite numerous teething problems with the online system, Lesufi said the department plans to continue with online applications in 2017 for applications for grades one and eight for the 2018 academic year.

"Important lessons were recorded with the 2016 experience and the system will be refined to incorporate these lessons," according to the MEC.

This after the 2016 process suffered a number of hiccups - the site crashed on debut in April, many parents experienced technical glitches when trying to register their children, and there were a high number of hacking attempts.

The department launched the site as a way to make the process more tech-savvy and help minimise long queues during school registration time. According to the GDE, it decided to introduce a digital system after receiving more than 30 000 late applications in 2015.

Placements

The department says over 233 000 online applications were received by the initial 1 June deadline and almost 79 000 applications were received after this deadline. Grade one and eight applications for 2017 are now closed.

As of 5 December, over 229 000 learners had been placed in Gauteng schools (both early and late applications) ? of which around 131 300 are grade ones and close to 98 000 are grade eights. This means over 81 000 learners are still not placed, "but the department will work around the clock to place all these learners and inform the parents".

The MEC says over 8 800 parents have not yet submitted the required documents to schools where they have applied and over 10 400 parents have not yet confirmed offers of placement.

Lesufi urged those who applied and have not yet received offers of placement to visit the admissions Web site or visit district offices to enquire about the status of their applications.

There are over 2.3 million learners enrolled in Gauteng schools, which shows an increase of almost 106 000 recorded between 2015 and 2016.

"This represents an increase of 4.47%. Rapid in-migration remains a contributing factor to the growth in learner numbers. The highest numbers of learners come from Limpopo, followed by the Eastern Cape," concludes Lesufi.

Share