Stick to response deadline or lose school places, Gauteng education warns

The Gauteng department of education is calling on parents who have offers of places for their children in schools to stick to the seven-day deadline to respond.

The department announced yesterday that placements for online admissions applications were under way.

All parents who had applied for 2019 admissions for Grade 1 and Grade 8 during the now closed application period would receive offers of placement via SMS. After receiving the SMS, parents must go to the department’s website to accept or reject the offer within seven working days and contact the call centre if they have any difficulty, the department said.

Gauteng department of education spokesperson Steve Mabona said the process was going well.

The only pressing issue was that some parents had forgotten the usernames and passwords they used to register on the website and were now clogging up the system with queries about this, he added.

He said the department’s call centre received more than 8 000 calls yesterday morning alone, most of them regarding lost log-in credentials which blocked other parents from asking other urgent questions.

Mabona said parents must stick to the seven-day deadline or they may lose the place offered to the next applicant on the waiting list.

He said: “Parents with pending status on the system are requested to be patient. Offers will be issued throughout the placement period.”

The department said parents who had not submitted the required documents to the schools during the allocated time-frame from April 16 to June 5 were requested to submit them to district offices from September 10 to 14.

“These applicants and all those who could not be placed by schools due to capacity will be placed by districts.

“The department plans to place all Grade 1 and 8 pupils for the 2019 academic year by October 31.”

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