17 000 W Cape pupils not placed in schools yet
A WEEK into the school year about 17 000 children in the province have not yet been placed in schools.
There are annual increases in pupil numbers and Education MEC Debbie Schäfer’s spokeswoman Jessica Shelver said yesterday the department was working around the clock to find schools at which the unplaced children could be enrolled.
Last year tension mounted at some schools with parents staging a sit-ins until schools accepted their children.
In Gauteng, anxious parents queued outside the Gauteng Department of Education offices in the hope of getting their children placed in schools before opening day.
Gauteng MEC for education Panyaza Lesufi said those who had applied late were not likely to get places before March.
More than one million pupils were enrolled at schools across the Western Cape last week.
The South African Democratic Teachers Union (Sadtu) predicted that poorer schools would be most affected by the number of unplaced pupils, as they would be compelled to take on more pupils than could be handled.
Union provincial chairman Jonovan Rustin yesterday said one of the reasons why so many pupils were unplaced was because parents did not register their children on time.
Rustin also said the provincial education department had not make accurate projections so as to provide for all pupils wanting to enrol.
“Schools also sometimes do not respond to parents timeously about whether or not children were accepted, so when it turns out that they were not, it creates havoc. We will also find that wealthier schools do not accept pupils as easily as poorer schools, and therefore the resources on poorer schools will be even more stretched. Wealthier schools do not accept a single pupil more than they planned to, and as a result we see overcrowding in poorer schools,” Rustin said.
To ensure that as many pupils were placed timeously as possible, the department introduced a new admission management information system in 2014.
Furniture, equipment and textbook orders were placed by schools last year so as to ensure early delivery.
Suppliers delivered textbooks except in cases where schools opted not to store books during the end-of-year holidays. Schools received workbooks by November 30 and most furniture orders by the end of October.
The Western Cape Education Department issued staff establishments to schools in September last year to enable them finalise their timetables for 2017.