The Gauteng Department of Education introduced the online admission system to ensure equity, eliminate queues at schools and provide accurate and timely information to enable planning.
The campaign has been a relative success – obviously with some challenges. A substantial number of learners around 80% were placed by August 2016.
This enabled the department to plan around the provision of Learning and Teaching Support Material (LTSM); educators; classrooms and infrastructure; as well as school furniture.
Further, 19 000 new applications were received through the 62 walk-in centers that the department had set up in January 2017.
The department worked hard and within two weeks in January 2017 had placed a substantial number of both learners that had applied online and those that applied for the first time in January.
The department is pleased to announce that the number of unplaced learners has been eliminated to 0.
The department will continue to use the online application system for 2018 learner admission into public schools. Several lessons have been learnt. We have been working on technical challenges experienced in the last admission period.
There are improvements with regard to the application and more enhancements to infrastructure and the App features. Technical improvements include the following:-
- Upgrading of the current server infrastructure to accommodate over 30 000 hits per second.
- ID Verification from Department of Home Affairs will be integrated.
- GPS will be integrated to ensure that geographic locations are correct.
We will work with e-Government Department to further refine and improve the online application, as a pilot for government-wide applications for services.
We urge parents to take the opportunity and apply early.
Details will be released in due course.
