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Placing pupils: Department reduces online registration backlog

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Gauteng MEC for Education Panyaza Lesufi. Picture: Cornel van Heerden
Gauteng MEC for Education Panyaza Lesufi. Picture: Cornel van Heerden

The Gauteng Department of Education says the number of unplaced learners whose parents applied online has been substantially reduced to 377.

The department says the remaining learners will be placed by the end of the week.

This comes after the department experienced shortfalls in placing thousands of pupils at the start of the 2017 school year.

Gauteng schools opened on January 11 but by January 17 there were still nearly 20 000 Grade 1 and Grade 8 pupils who were unplaced.

Of these, more than 7 000 were pupils whose parents had applied online for their placement, while more than 12 800 were applications through walk-ins.

The department received 19 536 new applications in January this year and said that 15 657 pupils had been placed in a space of two weeks, leaving a total of 3 879 unplaced pupils.

“In total 331 625 applications were processed by the department and 327 369 learners have been placed.

“[We are] satisfied with the progress made so far and believe that it has fulfilled the promise to find spaces for learners. More effort will be directed to placing all unplaced learners,” the department said.

The online application system was introduced in April last year to help facilitate applications for new Grade 1s and Grade 8s attending school in 2017.

It experienced glitches on the day of its launch and crashed as parents rushed to the website to secure spots for their children.

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