Parents have embraced online school application system – Lesufi

Despite minor glitches experienced during the first week of its school applications process, the Gauteng education department says it has received the highest number of applications this year, which proves that parents have “embraced” the online application system.

This comes after the department’s spokesperson, Steve Mabona, had previously said that parents were now opting for public schools instead of private schools “maybe because of affordability”.

Mabona said the department had received 220,802 applications for 2020 since the system went live on May 20.

He said this “reflects an increase of 146,964 (67%) applications compared to the opening day of admissions in 2019, that had 73,838 (Grade 1: 39,212 and Grade 8: 34,626) applications registered.

“As at July 17, 2019, a total of 298,003 (Grade 1: 154,264 and Grade 8: 143,739) applications were registered for the 2020 academic year.”

MEC Panyaza Lesufi said: “I would like to take this opportunity to express my gratitude to those parents who came in numbers to apply for the 2020 academic year. As a province, we are pleased that the parent population and stakeholders in Gauteng have embraced the use of the online application.

“This ground-breaking online application has provided the department with credible and reliable information. We will, therefore, continue to enhance this system and link it to other existing government systems, to further strengthen the credibility of the information attained.”

Despite this, Mabona said the department was “deeply disturbed” that 62,028 of the 298,003 applicants had failed to submit the required documents to the relevant schools.

“Parents will not receive offers of placement from schools where no documents were submitted,” he said.

He said provision had been made for these parents to submit these documents by July 31 at 2pm. He also added that the placement period for admissions in 2020 would begin on August 30, and close on October 30.

Mabona reminded and warned parents who had not applied at all that they only had today to apply online for their children to be admitted to Grades 1 and 8 in next year.

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