Members of Equal Education (EE) in Gauteng and the Western Cape have taken to the streets today, picketing outside education department district offices. Their target? The ineffective and frustrating slow school admissions processes have left thousands of learners in limbo, unable to start their 2024 academic year as they are not yet placed at schools.
Equal Education says they have been approached by aggrieved parents who expressed frustration with the inefficient and unclear application and appeals processes.
Parents are also unhappy with the unresponsive slow assistance at district offices, schools illegally withholding report cards due to non-payment of fees or voluntary contributions, and the lengthy distances that some learners will have to travel to the schools that they were allocated.
The pickets were held in provinces which are known for experiencing high demand for placements at the start of every new school year. The Western Cape Education Department (WCED) placed the responsibility of unplaced learners on parents who only applied for school placement in 2024 while the department’s official application period took place in mid-2023.
The Gauteng Department of Education (GDE) set up a system to process late applications in December 2023. While the system has placed thousands of applicants, not all these placements were accepted by parents.
Both these provinces also stress the impact of migration as a challenge as the demand for school placement grows, but the budget needed to facilitate the growing demand is unavailable.
Equal Education warns that the challenges of unplaced learners will worsen if several issues are not addressed. This includes the allocation of sufficient resources to provincial education departments which they must use to develop infrastructure.
Due to the failures of the admissions process, this issue will only worsen as more learners migrate to those areas. Without proactive planning, education departments will continue to fail parents and learners
Equal Education is calling for the immediate placement of all unplaced learners alongside the provision of adequate infrastructure in schools as mandated by the Norms and Standards for Public School Infrastructure.
Furthermore, there's a call for proactive planning by provincial education departments to tackle both present overcrowding and future expansion needs.
They also called for the Department of Basic Education to establish binding school capacity norms for fairer learner distribution, while national and provincial treasuries are called upon to allocate sufficient funds for school infrastructure, ensuring proper oversight to prevent misuse.
