The MEC for education in Gauteng Matome Chiloane kicked off the first day of the province’s online application system for children starting Grade 1 and Grade 8 next year in Winterveldt, north of Pretoria, this morning.
Chiloane was at the walk-in centre, which was set up at the Winterveldt multipurpose hall, in an area that consists of a large number of people who do not have access to the internet.
Though the walk-in centre will be operational only for today. The department said there are other 80 centres set up across the province’s education districts to assist parents with applications.
The Winterveldt community will have access to two other walk-in centres accessible to the area when the department folds its tent at the community hall today.
The province’s centres are set up at district offices, community halls and libraries. “Parents can also go to any public school to apply online,” said Chiloane, about those parents who have no access to internet connectivity, smartphones and computers.
“So far we have not had any complaints and not much glitches. The system can process up to 50 000 applications a minute,” said Chiloane, adding that the system has been improved and is more user-friendly.
“It takes about five to 10 minutes to complete the application,” he said, encouraging parents to also upload the requisite documents in the system, instead of going to each school where they have applied to submit the documents.
Departmental spokesperson Steve Mabona said by noon today, a total of 161 407 Grade 1 and Grade 8 applications were successfully processed in the online admission system.
“This reflects a slight decrease compared to last year’s 165 000 successful applications by noon on the opening day,” he said, attributing the decline to the upcoming long weekend.
“We believe this decrease may be due to this year’s application period occurring at the start of the long weekend,” he said.
Mabona acknowledged some challenges faced by some parents and guardians when applying on the system today, but said the problems were resolved within minutes of being reported.
“We have acknowledged a challenge faced by some applicants when entering their ID numbers onto the system. The Department of Home Affairs’ verification mechanism used on the online admissions [system] was unable to process certain ID numbers. However, this was effectively resolved within a few minutes as we discovered that applicants only had to refresh their browsers and proceed to apply successfully.
“We also noticed that some applicants who were applying for Grade 8 could not enter their previous schools on the system … It was also resolved instantly and all previous schools are now appearing in the system for Grade 8 applicants,” he said.
The Gauteng online application system will close on July 14. Parents and guardians are required to either upload the certified copies of the required documents on the system or submit them at the relevant schools within seven school days.
The closing date for online applications for Grade 1 and Grade 8 in the Northern Cape is June 22. Applications for Western Cape closed on April 15.
Gauteng, the first to implement the system about seven years ago, received 764 062 applications – 330 227 for Grade 1 and 457 433 for Grade 8 last year. While Western Cape got 23 174 applications for Grade 1 and 89 382 for Grade 8 last year. Northern Cape received 2 321 applications for Grade 1 and 11 107 for Grade 8 last year.
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