The Gauteng Department of Education (GDE) received more than 300,000 admission applications for the 2024 school year. The department says 99.8% of the learners whose parents submitted admission applications during the 2024 admission application period for Grade 1 and Grade 8 placement in the province.
Gauteng Education MEC Matome Chiloane says the GDE is in a much better position than they’ve ever been to process admission applications. This comes after they faced challenges in placing learners over the last several years.
Parents have really been working with us closely supporting what we are trying to do and this is linked with an appeal that we always seek from our parents that Gauteng as an education system is growing very fast …you could understand the pressure on the system.
Many families often move to economic hubs like Gauteng in search of greater economic opportunities. The children of these families need to go to school which means that the education department has to deal with an ever-increasing number of learners.
Chiloane says the GDE grows by approximately 30,000 learners every year. This growth not only means that the department has to place learners, but is often required to expand existing and build new infrastructure to cater to the growing demand for school placements.
You know it's not an ideal situation that we want to find ourselves in as a province but you know that within migration to Urban centres across the world, Gauteng will be one of those and it's demonstrated with our system.
The MEC says it's therefore important for parents to work with the department to ensure applications are complete as incomplete applications prevent the department from placing learners. This also prevents the department from implementing contingency messures to ensure all learners have a place at a Gauteng school.
So the system is growing we're not building schools fast enough so we find ourselves here, so the appeal with parents is that they need to work with us all the time so with those incomplete applications, we also begin to place them
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The 0.2% of parents who have incomplete applications will have to deliver supporting documents at schools the GDE places their children at. They will also not be able to object to their child’s placement at the school chosen by the provincial department.
Chiloane is confident that when schools open on 17 January 2024 all learners who are not yet placed will be in school.
We would want we would want 100% but we will have 100% what we can see about this process now is that by the 17th of January when schools open all this 0.2% will be placed so we're anticipating a greater, much more enthusiastic Academic Year
The MEC revealed that Gauteng School Late Applications Will open on 18 December 2023 and will close on 31 December 2023. These school placements will depend on the availability of space.
