Pretoria - The Gauteng Department of Education closed the 2023 Online Admissions application period for Grades 1 and 8 at midnight on Friday with hundreds of thousands of parents and guardians having lodged applications for their dependants to be placed.
A total of 748 485 Grade 1 and Grade 8 applications were recorded from the start of the 2023 Online Admissions application period on July 22, the department said.
The department’s Online Admissions System (had) recorded a total of 323 294 applications for Grade 1 and 448 168 applications for Grade 8 just prior to the shutdown.
Parents and guardians who only applied on Friday but had not uploaded documents were urged to upload urgently, or to physically submit their documents at all schools applied to within seven school days.
“The deadline for this will be August 30. Documents cannot be uploaded on the system after August 19 when the 2023 Online Admissions application period ends.
“Applications for Grade 1 or Grade 8 that are made with no documents submitted or uploaded will be considered as incomplete, and will only receive placement offers at schools with available space from December 1 to 15.”
The department said after applying, parents and guardians would receive text messages with placement offers, and this would be during the placement period from October 3 to 31.
“These placement offers must be accepted within seven school days. Offers will be sent to the cellphone numbers that parents used when applying.
“Therefore, parents are urged to not change or lose their numbers after applying.”
The department also said the placement offers were given based on a criteria in order of priorities like home address within the school’s feeder zone, sibling or previous schools, work address within school’s feeder zone, home address within 30km radius, and home address beyond 30km radius.
“We are proud that our innovative Online Admissions System has managed to successfully facilitate such a high number of applications.
“We have also noted a significantly low number of complaints from applicants, which is testament to the system’s constant improvement. Parents are urged to wait for the placement period to begin on October 3 in order to receive placement offers,” Gauteng Education MEC Panyaza Lesufi said.
Pretoria News