Thousands of pupils wait for placements

Each year while thousands of pupils prepare for the new academic year, thousands are still waiting to get placed in a school – and this year wasn’t any different.

This week, Gauteng department of education (GDE) spokesperson Steve Mabona said more than 34 000 students who missed the first week of school have been placed.

But Democratic Alliance (DA) Gauteng spokesperson for education Sergio dos Santos said there was still a concerning number of pupils unplaced.

“We are receiving complaints from parents and pupils that they are unable to find a school.

“We have complaints where pupils are placed far away from home and parents are unable to transport them to school,” he said. “In an informal settlement in Berea, Johannesburg, there are over 30 children who need assistance with school placement.”

Dos Santos added that there were children who hadn’t been able to apply to any school.

“We have consistently advocated for an earlier opening of the placement process to address these issues” he said.

South African Teachers’ Union executive officer Paul Sauer said the late placement of pupils was a chronic problem with various causes.

One of these was the lack of planning for and the effective roll-out of new schools.

“This is by no means the sole cause of late placements, but it is the one over which the various provincial departments of education have the most control.

“The delay in placements also has a negative knock-on effect for pupils and teachers,” he said.

Sauer said contact time between pupils and teachers was one of the fundamental building blocks of education that could not easily be replaced.

“Loss of this time causes unnecessary pressure for pupils and teachers alike, who now have to compensate for the lost time by compressing the syllabus into the remaining school days. For every day lost, the problem is compounded,” he said.

Sauer said solving this problem in the short-term was a challenging task and forcing schools to accept pupils over and above the school’s capacity was not a solution.

“The overloading of school infrastructure and teacher capacity has a net negative effect on a school as a whole. All relevant stakeholders need to protect our teachers from being overloaded with compressed teaching time and excessive class sizes, as the potential loss of experienced teachers is something that our education system cannot survive,” he said.

SA Democratic Teachers’ Union general-secretary Mugwena Maluleke said late placements was a huge risk to pupils who end up falling through the cracks.

Maluleke said some pupils started questioning their worth. “Others get placed far from home and have a lot of grievances about transport and some social ills visit them on these long routes,” he said.

Maluleke said the social and demographic structure was also a problem because the majority of affected pupils were black.