Parents might be unable to apply for Grade 1 or Grade 8 places at sought-after Gauteng schools if yesterday's website crashes are anything to go by. The Gauteng department of education has implemented an online system for parents to apply for admission for children starting primary or high school. It launched the site yesterday morning and within minutes it had crashed after receiving 600 visitors a second.The deputy director of the Federation of Governing Bodies of SA Schools, Jaco Deacon, said the department's insistence on using an online system before it was ready to do so "was putting children's futures in jeopardy".Parents used Twitter to complain.@lekgowa14 said: "This is not like buying concert tickets; this is our children's future that you are experimenting with."Yesterday was the start of a seven-day process in which parents must enter application details on the website.The website will be much busier on Tuesday next week when parents will have to apply online for their children's admission to their preferred school. Places are decided on a first-come, first-served basis.More than 200000 parents are expected to apply for Grade 1 places alone.The department said yesterday that the site would be offline until this morning because of "unforeseen technical challenges".Deacon said: "We predicted the system would crash. But department officials told us it wouldn't."It is going to crash next week when traffic increases," he said.The head of the School Governing Body Foundation, Tim Gordon, said the foundation had raised its concerns about the site crashing at a meeting with the head of the department of education, Edward Mosuwe, on Friday.The plight of parents who did not have internet access was brought up.Thelma Sibeko, who wants to enrol her child for Grade 8 at Bhukulani Secondary School in Soweto, said the school was a stone's-throw from her house and she would have preferred to apply in person."And I don't have access to the internet so I don't know how much I would need if I go to the internet cafe, and you must remember they charge by the hour so I don't know whether it will take me an hour or two hours to apply."It's really unfair. The department did not consider the inconvenience it has caused parents," Sibeko said.Parent Thando Dlephu said: "The whole day I have been sitting on this thing and I have not gone far. At one point it gives you an error message and next you go in but you are unable to register. My worry is that time is going to run out."A department spokesman said the online site would be operational from today and would be able to handle the high volume of traffic...