Gauteng education MEC Matome Chiloane says the system for online pupil enrolments ran smoothly this time, with more than 200,000 applications processed on Thursday morning.
The 2026 online admissions process for places in grades 1 and 8 at government schools opened at 8am. Within the first hour the system recorded 78,645 applications for both grades. By 1pm this number had risen to 213,654 processed applications. This comprised 93,042 grade 1 applications and 120,612 for grade 8.
“We are proud of this achievement, processing such a high number of applications on the first day. This success reflects the improvements made to the system, which operated smoothly despite a brief delay experienced by users who tried accessing the site before it opened,” Chiloane said.
More than 40,000 users were attempting to access the online system before the opening time, with some starting at 5am.
“This early surge caused temporary delays for some users who had to refresh the page before gaining access once the system went live.”
The 2026 online admissions application window will remain open until August 29.
TimesLIVE
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