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School placements: Gauteng Department of Education must prevent similar scrambles in 2025

ByAfriForum

In correspondence to the Gauteng Department of Education, AfriForum asked for information on steps being taken to prevent the current scramble with the placement of learners in 2025.

Even though the online application process was supposedly launched in Gauteng to ensure that all applicants are placed timeously in grades 1 and 8, thousands of children annually only get placed after re-applications, appeal processes and late placements.

According to Alana Bailey, Head of Cultural Affairs at AfriForum, this year is no exception. Schools are inter alia being asked to accommodate five more learners each, or temporary classrooms are set up. Schools are being created hastily in Pretoria and Kempton Park, causing major challenges for the infrastructure of residential neighbourhoods as access routes are not suitable for the high pressure of school traffic. Furthermore, it is planned to accommodate eighth graders on primary school grounds due to insufficient space at high schools. All these steps are the result of the department’s poor planning, which began during the tenure of Panyaza Lesufi as MEC for Education and is now being continued by his successor.

AfriForum would like to know what is being done to:

  • improve the performance of dysfunctional schools in order to reduce the pressure on functional schools;
  • build more schools;
  • manage the annual provincial education budget more efficiently so that the amount allocated for creating infrastructure for schools is fully spent;
  • prioritise the replacement of temporary classrooms;
  • ensure that schools are built in suburbs where the infrastructure can handle the additional traffic and other service requirements;
  • reconsider delegating the placements to schools as had been the case in the past to eliminate months of time wasted on negotiations regarding placements.

“It is unacceptable that schools, parents and children have to deal with the stress and pressure accompanying late placements for grades 1 and 8 and have to find solutions, while it is the ineffective planning and mismanagement of the provincial department that is causing it,” Bailey stated.

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