Easy registration or frustration

Dineo Moloko

If you have a child who will be in grade one or in grade eight in 2017, you will have the pleasure of registering your child online.

The Gauteng Department of Education has implemented a system that will seemingly make it easier for parents to pick the best school for their children and for schools to be able to monitor the amount of applications they receive.

As applications are sent through, applicants are immediately placed on the A or B list with the option of choosing three possible schools for their children. After receiving an sms, they have 14 days to submit their supporting documents to the school. Parents have until June 1 to apply.

Seems very simple, right? Wrong.

This new system was launched during the week of April 5 by Gauteng Education MEC Panyaza Lesufi and registrations were set to start on April 12.

There were a few attempts to launch this system before but with a number of technical problems it failed. In the hope of a successful first day of registration, yet again this was met with the website shutting down hours after the beginning of registration because of a few glitches in the system that needed to be fixed. This led to a week of delay and frustrations for parents.

A number of parents hit social media to show their disapproval of this system. They were frustrated at not being able to register their child, adding to the general stress of registration.

And those who have no access to the internet or have no knowledge in ITC, are battling to get their children into a school.

Clearly, one of the primary reasons for the implementation of this system is in aid of saving our natural resources, by limiting the use of paper. By also making it easier and faster for parents to register from the comfort of their home or office without having to take time off. Which is important for our environment, but where are the computer labs or satellite houses for those who do not have access to a technological resource?

On the one hand we see the positive of being able to place your child in a school that you as a parent desire, but on the latter we see a struggle for those who do not have access to this resource to be afforded the same chance.

Whether this will work or not, the future will tell, but let’s not shoot it down before it’s even fully born. Every new thing has its own way of adjusting to a well established system. Nothing is wrong with going back to the drawing board to re-evaluate, strategise and implement a system that caters for individuals across all borders.

Grade 2 to grade 7 and grade 9 to grade 11 still requires manual registrations at the school. The registration website is gdeadmissions.org.za for grade 1 and grade 8 only.