Improved online system for Gauteng school admissions 2025

Gauteng MEC for education Matome Chiloane says online applications for admissions of Grades 1 and 8 for the year 2025 will start tomorrow and that the system, which has been held up by glitches in previous years, has been improved.

Department spokesperson Xolani Mkhwemte said parents must register again on the system. Alternatively, they can submit the documents at the schools they are applying to.

Response ‘doesn’t seem to reflect the true situation’

Equal Education’s Tevin Mahlangu said they recently hosted a two-day imbizo to address the school admission crisis in Gauteng and that the department’s response “doesn’t seem to reflect the true situation”.

“Every year, numerous parents and pupils face the frustration of not finding school placements.”

Mkhwemte said some of the problems experienced previously included parents leaving applications incomplete, not registering reliable cellphone numbers, not certifying documents and not applying to schools in the feeder zone of their home address.

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In previous years, parents’ issues included that the web page indicated it was under construction, some schools did not appear on the list and applications got stuck among other technical glitches. Last year, 400 000 pupils were placed via the online system.

AfriForum hoped department go back to old system

AfriForum’s head of cultural affairs Alana Bailey hoped the department would go back to the old system. “Parents applying directly to a school worked better and caused less stress for them.”

She said they had received complaints from parents. “The problem started when schools got lists of children allocated to them. Very often children were allocated who lived very far away or who wanted education in English but were assigned to a monolingual Afrikaans school.”

Equal Education and Equal Education Law Centre are getting an influx of requests from children who have not been in school since January.

Mahlangu said: “We are helping people apply in their local districts by creating pamphlets for parents. Additionally, we are assisting parents from Denver impacted by the Marshalltown fire. There are still children out of school as a result of this.”

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