School registration delay pinned on department’s backlog
The school was given an introductory membership to the Independent Schools Association of Southern Africa until it is registered with the education department.
The registration of the Spark School in Theresa Park was allegedly hampered by administrative issues experienced by the Gauteng Department of Education.
“The relevant registration and compliance documentation for Spark Theresa Park has been submitted to the department, however, like many independent schools in the province, we are experiencing delays in the processing of our application due to a backlog,” Spark Schools spokesperson Nikki Ramphal said.
This after a number of social media users and parents of children at the school took to Twitter to share their dissatisfaction with the school not being registered with the education department.
One such parent – who spoke to Rekord on condition of anonymity – said she removed her child, a grade 4 learner, as she “no longer felt comfortable”.
“Spark Schools is registered with the Independent Schools Association of Southern Africa (Isasa),” Ramphal said, adding they remain committed to providing all children with access to high-quality, affordable education.
She said they were continuously in contact with the education department.
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Another parent, Victor Ngobeni, said his child was still enrolled at the school as he saw “no reason to panic”.
He explained how parents started asking the school questions in February.
Ngobeni said they were told the school’s application was held up by an application for land-use change as the premises where the school was based was initially a private business.
He said the school had until June to finalise the matter or it could be “in trouble”.
“The year can’t end without them getting their papers,” Ngobeni said.
Meanwhile, Isasa executive director Lebogang Montjane said the school had an “introductory membership” with them.
“Until they are fully registered they are given an introductory membership because we require all our schools to be compliant with the law,” he said adding they know the law itself allegedly discouraged people instead of assisting people to comply with it.
Montjane said the reality many schools are faced with are related to administrative challenges.
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“Many schools, in fact one of our oldest schools in Gauteng, took more than three years to get a new campus registered with the Gauteng education department.”
He attributed the problem to the department’s regulations being out of sync with the realities of schools getting registered.
“The reality is, sadly, that Isasa now has had to say if you have submitted your application for registration purposes, we will give you introductory membership until you can get fully registered because we know how long it takes the department to get you registered,” Montjane said.
“I don’t know of a school that joined Isasa and subsequently got itself registered that was registered on the first day it started operating.”
Multiple attempts to obtain comment from the Gauteng education department spokesperson Steven Mabona were unsuccessful at the time of going to press.
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