Glitches again hit Gauteng’s online school applications

The Gauteng education department’s online application system has again been dogged by technical glitches, with the 2021 school admission application process littered with parents’ frustrations with the “mess”.

The online admission applications were supposed to start at 8am on Thursday, but frustrated parents complained that the system was problematic.

An applicant who did not want to be named said they managed to log in just after 8am, after it went live, but that the entire process was only completed more than an hour later.

She was worried whether this would affect their chances of getting space because of the “first-come-first-serve” principle.

The department blamed the glitches on the introduction of security features such as the one-time pin (OTP) for the first time, the volume of applications as well as the address verification process.

Gauteng department of education spokesperson Steve Mabona said the first day of online applications were always problematic.

He said there were issues of parents entering wrong information, for instance about identity, saying the identity verification was linked to home affairs and they depended on this verification for the application process.

Mabona said they had from when the system went live, recorded more than 70 000 online applications for 2021 admissions.

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