School placements: Audit pushes some to December as documents queried

The Gauteng education department has issued 293,057 placement offers to parents for grade 1 and 8 pupils next year — of which 105,193 are yet to be accepted by parents.

The department says parents have seven days from receiving an offer to either accept it as final, which places the pupil at the school with no possibility of reversal, or provisionally accept while awaiting other offers.

Parents who are not satisfied with received offers have a week to submit objections using an online form. Outcomes are to be provided within 14 days.

The department confirmed some parents' application statuses were changed from “documents verified” to “no documents submitted”.

This was the result of a review process which checked documents for authenticity, legibility and completeness, it said.

These applications will only be considered for placement during the late registration period from December 11.

Placement criteria used by the department are:

1. Home address within the school's feeder zone closest to the school;
2. Sibling attendance or previous enrolment at the school;
3. Work address within the school's feeder zone;
4. Home address within a 30km radius of the school; and
5. Home address beyond a 30km radius of the school.

“While placement offers are being sent out in batches, we remind parents that this process will continue throughout the remainder of the year,” education MEC Matome Chiloane said.

“We remain committed to placing all learners fairly. We thank parents for their patience and co-operation as we work diligently to secure placements for pupils in Gauteng state schools.”

TimesLIVE