Gauteng parents who applied for grade 1 and 8 school admission in 2023 to be notified about placements via SMS

02 October 2022 - 13:59
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Education MEC Panyaza Lesufi speaks about the placement of pupils in two grades for 2023.
Education MEC Panyaza Lesufi speaks about the placement of pupils in two grades for 2023.
Image: GDE media

Parents who applied to schools for admission in grade 1 and 8 next year will be alerted by the Gauteng education department from Monday via SMS about the placement of their children.

The SMS notifications for the 2023 online admissions placement period for the two grades — which starts on October 3 and ends on November 30 — will be sent to the contact numbers provided by parents when applying.

Education MEC Panyaza Lesufi confirmed this on Sunday during a presentation on the placement process.

“We started the online process almost seven years ago and we tried to improve the system literally every year so that we can be able to be in a position to allocate proper spaces within our schooling environment,” he said.

The department had received 764,062 applications for grades one and eight since the opening of the online application process.

“For us to manage almost 764,000 applications, it indicates that we have grown as a department in terms of the capacity to manage this system and it means that we have the necessary skills within the department to manage these numbers,” he said.

He interpreted the number of applications as a vote of confidence for public education in Gauteng. “To us it is a massive confidence that young dynamic professionals believe that public education is far above private education,” he said.

The SMSs will be sent out on a continual basis until November 30. This means not all applicants will receive an SMS on the first day of the placement period.

Lesufi said there was no need to panic if parents and guardians had not received an SMS as they could use their credentials to log onto the system and check if they had received a placement offer.

“Tomorrow [Monday] we are releasing happy SMSs. A happy SMS means as a parent you are going to get an SMS that says among the 764,000 people that have applied for spaces in our schools you were fortunate, your child has been placed.”

In the event of an SMS indicating a child had been placed at a certain school, this would be regarded as a successful placement at that school. There would be no need for a parent or guardian to access the online system to accept an offer because the child would be placed at that school.

“This time we want to urge parents because you did the application, it is you who applied, when you get an SMS that your child was placed at school X there is no need to get back to the website to click accept. You don’t have to do anything, you just need to know the school where your child is placed,” he said.

The department had identified schools which received an overwhelming number of applications, exceeding their capacity.

About 275 primary schools were regarded as high-pressure schools along with about 221 secondary schools, particularly in Pretoria.

The department will address classroom shortages and enhance space by providing schools with mobile units and transferring funds to schools for self-build classroom projects to accommodate more pupils.

The process will make about 599 additional classrooms available for primary schools and 698 for secondary schools.

The department cautioned it would not be possible to accommodate all applicants in their preferred schools. In some cases, pupils would be placed at schools with available space.

Department HOD Edward Mosuwe said from Monday, through to November, parents would receive SMS notifications on a gradual basis.

“In the event that your child is placed and you do not object to the placement you don’t have to do anything. But there may be an instance where your child is placed — remember you had five choices -school five may place your learner but not school one in terms of the number of schools to which you have applied.

“In such a case that’s where you may want to log in and lodge an appeal until such time with the view that your first school of choice may offer you placement,” he said.

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