165,000 school applications captured in spite of early glitches, says Gauteng education

The Gauteng department of education (GDE) had electronically captured more than 165,000 grade 1 and 8 admission applications for next year by noon on Friday.

This in spite of the 2023 online system experiencing a glitch with Google when applications opened in the morning. 

Department spokesperson Steve Mabona said the online admission system was temporarily restricted by Google Maps due to reaching a maximum of 6,000 requests a minute.

It resulted in parents not being able to view and select schools when applying.

“This challenge was effectively resolved within 30 minutes after the system opened at 8am, and parents were able to proceed with their applications.”

The online admissions application period will continue until August 19.

“Parents and guardians are urged to either upload certified copies of the required documents onto our system or submit them at the schools they applied to within seven school days,” said Mabona.

The department also encouraged parents to visit district offices and decentralised walk-in centres to receive assistance with applications.

Gauteng education MEC Panyaza Lesufi said: “We sincerely apologise to parents and guardians for the inconvenience they encountered when our system opened for applications. We thank our technicians for swiftly resolving the matter, which has led us to process a huge amount of successful applications on the first day.” 

For further assistance, applicants can call the GDE’s contact centre on 0800-000-789 or send a message via WhatsApp on 060-891-0361.

TimesLIVE

Support independent journalism by subscribing to the Sunday Times. Just R20 for the first month.