Placement of learners in schools almost complete

The Department of Education has announced that the number of placed Grade 1 and 8 learners for 2020 has increased to 96.4 per cent.

This was revealed by the MEC for the Department of Education Panyaza Lesufi during a press briefing held in Johannesburg on 24 November. Lesufi said the department has managed to place 272 741 applicants who submitted documents. The number of applicants still waiting to be placed in schools stands at 3 210 for Grade 1 and 6 408 for Grade 8. They are expected to be placed by the end of November. Meanwhile, about 160 appeals have been received by the department and are currently being processed.

“Working closely and collaboratively with our schools, especially those in high-pressure areas, we managed to increase capacity to accommodate more unplaced learners. Consequently, most of the high-pressure schools are full,” said Lesufi.

Lesufi said they have identified schools where additional classroom capacity was required to allow for additional placements. He said procurement processes were underway to assist with provisioning of mobile classrooms to the identified schools.

He added that following the commencement of the application process, parents who did not accept offers of placement forfeited unconfirmed offers. “New offers were issued to the next in line on the placement list. To facilitate further placement, schools with a high number of applicants were persuaded and agreed to increase capacity to accommodate more learners.”

Furthermore, Lesufi said the department had negotiated with school principals to increase the capacity based on spaces available in existing classrooms to fill them to capacity, converting unused rooms to classrooms and using available school grounds to erect mobile classrooms. “Fourthly, we focused on schools which didn’t reach capacity during placement. The system auto-populated offers with applications within 30km and beyond 30km. Transfers were processed to schools with available spaces for parents that applied to one school that was filled.”

Lesufi dismissed allegations that the department had plans to take Afrikaans-speaking learners to township schools. He said the intention of the department was to introduce English and Afrikaans as the language of learning and teaching in township schools. “We would like to reiterate that time is too precious to waste on negative organisations who do not have a desire for transformation, social cohesion and non-racialism. Such people aim to further oppress the down-trodden and to reduce the positive gains that were achieved since the dawn of our democracy,” he said.

What do you think the department needs to do to improve the application and admission process?

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https://www.citizen.co.za/northcliff-melville-times/298403/department-education-responds-misleading-reports-pupils-leaving-school-grade-9/