Maluleke said, “I applied before the closing date, however, when I made a follow-up visit to the school to check why they had not yet given me feedback about the application when other parents had received theirs, my child’s name was not in the system. It was like I never applied.”
Malukele claims the school promised to look into the matter and finally called him to reassure him that the application had been found. He and his partner went back to the school a week later to follow up on the application, as no further feedback and communication had been received from the school. Again, the application could not be found in the system.
He stated that since then, he has gone to the school six times and his child’s name is still not in the system. Even though the school claimed, through phone calls and in verbal communication, to have found the application, Malukele still could not find his child’s name in the system.
On 2 September, he contacted the Department of Education and was asked for a tracking number. He contacted the school to ask for the tracking number, but was told to leave his contact details for the staff to get back to him. Later he received an SMS stating that his child’s application had been unsuccessful.
He alleges that he tried many times to speak to the principal, but was told the principal was unavailable. Maluleke admitted that he also lost the acknowledgement letter issued after he made the application, which made things worse as there was no proof of his application. Maluleke said he has not been contacted by the school for over a month. He said he has not applied to other schools and still hopes that Midrand Primary School will take his daughter.
In response to Maluleke’s allegation, the Gauteng Department of Education’s Phumla Sekhonyane said, “The school acknowledges that the pupil’s application form was misplaced, but later recovered. The parent also admitted to the school that he lost the acknowledgement letter issued by the school but still has the SMS sent to him by the school.”
Sekhonyane explained that due to the fact that Maluleke does not stay within the feeder zone of Midrand Primary School, his application was placed on waiting list B.
“On 8 September, the parent returned to the school and indicated that he wanted to change the address on the application form from his residential address and apply using his employment address because he is working in the area, information he did not provide when he first applied to the school,” she explained.
Sekhonyane said Maluleke further indicated that he was doing this so he could be moved from waiting list B to A.
According to the department, the principal asked Maluleke if he was going to create a new application and Maluleke indicated that he didn’t have a problem with that as long as he could be on waiting list A. The principal explained that the new application will be treated as late registration because the early registration period closed on 26 May. The parent then completed a new application form using his employment address and was issued with an acknowledgement letter of late registration on waiting list A at number 43.
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