The Gauteng Department of Education is also working on processing 160 appeals. In a statement on Sunday, Mabona said 272 741 (96.4%) of 282 787 applicants who submitted documents had been placed. This decrease in unplaced pupils was achieved in close collaboration with schools, Mabona said.
“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.
“We have identified schools where additional classroom capacity is required to allow for additional placements. Procurement processes are under way to assist with provisioning of mobile classrooms to the identified schools.”
The placement process has been accelerated thanks to a system which auto populated placements according to certain details like geographical area, siblings in the school and work addresses.
“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 high number of applicants were persuaded and agreed to increase capacity to accommodate more learners,” Mabona said. These negotiations were based on the space available within classrooms to fill up capacity as well as converting unused spaces into classrooms and using available grounds to erect mobile classrooms.
“We focused on schools which didn’t reach capacity during placement. The system auto-populated offers with applications within 30kms and beyond 30kms; transfers were processed to schools with available spaces for parents who applied to one school that was filled,” Mabona said.
Lastly, the department matched unplaced pupils from full schools with schools in feeder zones that matched the address of the applicant.
“It became evident that 160 057 (60%) applied only to one school, and this is further hindering the placement process, because we need to link the learner within the feeder zone/s. Of this number, 18 223 had applied to schools outside their feeder zone,” Mabona said.
