The Gauteng Department of Education (GDE) urges parents and guardians to meet the deadline for online applications for 2019, which is Monday, 28 May.
The Department said the online system of applying for Grades 1 and 8 will shut down at midnight. The Department also reminded parents who have applied to submit the required documents at schools urgently.
“As a special concession, schools will accept documents up to 2pm on 5 June 2018. Failure to submit documents will lead to applicants forfeiting their positions in the queue,” the Department said in a statement.
The statement went on to say that a total of 535 064 applications have been processed since the start of the online application process on 16 April 2018. This translates to 251 808 applications for Grade 1 and 283 256 for Grade 8. The Department said most of these are self-applications by parents who utilised the system. Approximately 18 000 parents utilised the 37 decentralised admission centres for assistance to apply on online.
“The Department is excited by the overwhelming response from parents/ guardians that have already applied and thanks them for their cooperation. An unprecedented number of parents/ guardians heeded the call to apply on time. Most of the decentralised admission centres were flooded on the first day of applications. While a few challenges were encountered, the application period proceeded relatively free of errors.”
The Department said there are 385 schools with less than 50 applications, 79 schools with less than 20 applications, and 69 schools with less than 10 applications. These schools are all located in townships. It is concerning that in the last two years many parents in townships have waited for the late application period and flooded GDE offices in January to apply for their children to be admitted to school.
“The Department is moving away from late applications and parents who do not apply online by midnight on the 28 May 2018 are running the risk of not having their children in school in January 2019,” the Department said.
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