The Gauteng department of education experienced several technical problems when they opened their online applications, for grade 1 and grade 8 2021, on Thursday morning.
But they said that by midday they had successfully recorded over 70 thousand applications.
GDE spokesperson Steve Mabona said the problem was resolved quickly and parents are now continuing with the online admission applications.
“The Gauteng Department Education wish to confirm that at about 10:15 about 68 thousand successful applications were recorded.
“Please note the OTP was introduced as an added security feature, and unfortunately, we experienced challenges and that feature was overwritten, so is cancelled. No OTP.
“It must also be noted that the Identity verification was a challenge in the few minutes and was quickly sorted,” he said.
Mabona said some parents received an SMS confirming their application with blank Reference numbers, and as such, they have resolved the challenge.
He said the department will resend reference numbers to all of them today.
“There was a delay in address validation, due to high volumes of applications. Please note that this is a data-free system,” he said.
MEC Panyaza Lesufi has also apologised to some parents, who were inconvenienced in the first hour of opening the system and thanked them for embracing the system.
