Scramble for parents
PARENTS were yesterday still doing uniform and stationery shopping for their children ahead of schools reopening today.
They were going up and down making sure their children had all the necessary tools needed to start their 2022 academic year.
Some, explaining why they were only running around yesterday, said just like everyday life, some things were way out of their control and situations could arise at the most inconvenient times.
Some parents said they preferred to buy all the stationery and uniforms during the Christmas holidays just to avoid last-minute panic buying.
Some said they were not so lucky or had the privilege of getting everything in order before the schools opened.
Among a long list of reasons among were not having the money, the changing of schools and other personal reasons.
Others had relocated and struggled to find new schools for their children.
Lesego Mothibe said her reason for buying her son’s school uniform just a day before the start of the new school year was that her son changed schools and when she got the acceptance letter she had not yet been paid.
“I could not buy the uniform because it is sold at the school as it has an emblem on it, so I did not have money to buy it earlier. I am only buying it now as the school shop is now open and we can buy from them.”
While Mothibe was lucky to get a school for her son, other parents were not so lucky to have their children placed or accepted in a school.
In Ga-Rankuwa, on Monday hundreds of parents queued for hours outside the Thuto Thebe Primary School waiting to be assisted with the placement of their children. Some returned yesterday after not being succesful in getting assistance the previous day.
Some queued from as early as 3am on Monday hoping that they would get assisted soonest.
This did not only happen in Ga-Rankuwa but other parts of the country as well, with parents saying that they were worried that their children would miss the first day of the academic year.
THE Competition Commission says it will continue to monitor the pricing of school uniforms and urged schools to keep uniforms as generic as possible.
After investigations into anti-competitive behaviour in the school uniform supply chain, the commission and the Department of Basic Education last year jointly released a circular guiding schools and stakeholders about best practice for procurement.
The commission says that a survey will be rolled out over the next few weeks to assess the level of compliance.
It lists the principles governing these guidelines as:
• School uniform should be as generic as possible, such that it is obtainable from as many suppliers possible.
• Where deemed necessary, exclusivity should be limited to only a few “must” items that the schools regard as necessary to obtain from pre-selected suppliers, eg school badges.
• Where there are approved suppliers, schools should follow a competitive bidding process when appointing them.
• Schools should appoint more than one supplier in order to give parents more options.
• The concluded agreements should be of limited duration so schools can continuously check the market and obtain the best offering for parents.
The commission in 2014 launched a probe into price-fixing of uniforms and kickbacks for schools.