Guarantee uninterrupted learner access to schooling by ensuring online admission system is used to plan allocation of school resources

2 August 2021

To ensure that no education-deserving child is denied access to schooling, with no disruptions to teaching and learning due to shortages of resources, the Gauteng Department of Education (GDE) MEC, Panyaza Lesufi must use the online application system to adequately plan the allocation of resources and budget for schools before the start of the 2022 academic year.

The department has constantly failed to place learners in schools on time, and to provide adequate resources such as additional classrooms as well as teachers to schools that are experiencing high demand of admission. This has resulted in learners at such schools being taught inside school halls and overcrowded classrooms where the environment is not conducive for learning and teaching.

In May this year, there were still learners in the province who have not yet been placed in schools since the beginning of the academic year. Many of their parents claim that they applied on time, yet their children had still not been placed. These learners continue to miss out on schooling while other learners are progressing with the curriculum. How is a child now expected to catch up with such an unnecessary delay in their education?

The DA welcomes the opening of the online admission; however, we have been calling on the department to open it as early as April to ensure that all learners who applied on time are placed by the end of October.

By so doing, this ensures that no learner misses a day of schooling when the new 2022 academic year begins and there is no repeat of what has been happening in previous years.

It would also enable parents to choose where their children are placed, to budget for school uniforms and arrange for scholar transport while there is still time.

The DA urges parents and guardians to start applying for their children immediately, and not to wait for the last minute, while those who do not have internet access should go to their nearest designated centre to be assisted with the online application.

We also call on the department to regularly communicate with parents or guardians by informing them whether their child or children have been placed to a school to avoid incidents of the past two years where parents applied but did not receive any feedback from the department. The department should also regularly monitor the system to ensure that the manipulation of the system by school principals and district officials is eliminated.

Furthermore, we will continue to monitor the online admission process to ensure that the system is transparent and all parents who applied on time are prioritised, and their children are allocated schools. We will also be regularly engaging with the department when parents raise issues with us with regards to the online admission process to ensure that there are immediate interventions.

Issued by Khume Ramulifho, DA Gauteng Shadow MEC for Education, 2 August 2021