Gauteng - Parents who are waiting for confirmation text messages confirming school placement for their Grade 1 and Grade 8 children, may not receive them today, the department has warned.
Spokesperson for the Gauteng Department of Education (GDE), Steve Mabona urged parents to be patient as not everyone was likely to receive school placement SMSes today [Monday].
In a television interview with Newzroom Afrika on Monday, Mabona said, “They need to be patient because not all of them will receive SMSes today. Since midnight, parents have been receiving SMSes and we saw on our social media platforms some are happy, indicating that they have received their SMSes.”
The 2023 online admissions application period opened on July 22 and was closed on August 19 with the GDE receiving over 700 000 applications.
The issuing of SMSes began today (October 3) and is expected to continue up until November 30.
Those parents who have received SMSes already, have been informed of which school their child would be placed in during the coming schooling year.
Mabona said they were trying to accommodate everyone who was in the system because, "we have an obligation constitutionally as the department to place children at schools“.
However, Mabona said there some pupils will not be accommodated now because they did not provide verified proof of address.
The department will accommodate those parents and pupils from December 1 to December 15.
Mabona warned, however, that there would be no room for appeal as the department will allocate a school according to its available space, “because you are operating outside the application period".
In terms of standardising education across all schools, Mabona said they had improved the township education system.
"We have improved so much, we have improved our township education. In the online education that we have implemented there, each and every township school will have a smartboard, learners will have their tablets and educators will be empowered with their laptops so that learners can be taught remotely," he said.
He added that they were opening schools of specialisation (SOS) which had become very popular.
“About 90% of the SOS schools are in the townships and we look at their performances, they are doing well, there is no SOS that gives us less than 85% in terms of grade 12 results,’ he said.
Education