The Gauteng Department of Education was facing an ongoing challenge of learners meant to start Grade 1 and Grade 8 being unsuccessfully placed within a school. Now, the Department. along with parents and guardians, have managed to turn around the low figures of successfully placed learners.
The Gauteng Department of Education (GDE) has announced the successful placement of almost 300 000 Grade One and Grade Eight learners in schools across the Gauteng province.
During 2023, the Department was having issues with late applications submissions for the two grades, as well as parents delaying the acceptance of a place at schools, which created a system backlog.
According to the Gauteng MEC for Education, Matome Chiloane, during November of 2023 around 260 0000 learners had managed to secure their places in Grade One and Grade Eight.
“Currently, the figure is sitting at 287 297 [learners], which accounts to 99% entry and 9.03% of the total 100% traced; so we are left with 2848 learners to be placed,” said the MEC.
The application period, which opened in July and closed around October of 2023, was extended to 20 December, 2023 to allow for late applications to be submitted.
However, this time around, only schools with available space will be presented to parents to choose from when submitting late applications. The learner will be automatically be placed at the one school their application was submitted to.
During the initial application, parents were allowed to apply to a maximum of five schools. The Department then worked to place the learners at one of these schools using their placement criteria.
GDE officials have stated that despite the re-opening of the applications period so late in the year, they are confident that learners will be placed in schools on time, before the academic year kicks off for 2023.
Due to the limited number of places left available at schools in the province, and the fact that most learners have already been placed, parents will only have limited choices for schools.
Parents will be able to apply online and immediately upload documents online. Documents not uploaded online may be hand delivered to schools from 11 to 31 January 2023.
The GDE late application period will end on Tuesday, 31 January 2023 at 00:01 AM.
