Cape Town - Education MEC David Maynier has said that as of December 11, the Western Cape Education Department (WCED) has allocated places for 120 778, or 99.43%, of the learners for whom applications were received for Grade 1 and 8 for the 2024 school year.
Placement is in progress for 688, or 0.56%, Grade 1 and 8 learners. Late applications continue to arrive, with 176 received in just the past three weeks.
“We understand that this is a stressful and anxious period for these parents.
“As a department, we are asking parents to work with us as we try to accommodate their children as soon as possible. We are exploring all available options to find a place for these learners for the start of the school year,” Maynier said.
“Despite a R716.4-million blow to our budget, we are fighting hard to expand the number of places available at schools in the Western Cape.
“We will still build nine new schools to accommodate the learners applying for the 2024 school year, as well as 496 classrooms in areas of high demand for placement,” said.
In total, the department’s revised plan aims to deliver 608 additional classrooms across the province, which is still more than double the average number built annually before 2022/2023.
“Our officials and schools are working hard under extreme pressure to make sure that they find a place for every child.
“We are leaving no stone unturned in our effort to place every learner, and we will continue to work to finalise placement for all remaining learners whose parents have already applied,” Maynier said.
“We have put a great deal of effort into encouraging parents to apply on time during the admissions applications window, between 13 March 2023 and 14 April 2023. We provided pop-up sites across the province for parents to be assisted if they could not apply online. And our district offices have been accepting walk-in applications since the online applications closed.”
Despite this, Maynier said that they are aware that many thousands of learners will arrive in the first term next year needing placement.
The WCED just does not know where they will seek placement, or what their grades, languages, ages, or subject choices will be.
“This makes planning our resource allocation for these extremely late applicants in advance very difficult, and their parents will have to wait some time before their child is placed.
“We will work to place every learner for whom an application is received going forward, but we want to be clear that Western Cape schools are full, and thus we appeal for patience from parents submitting new applications as they may not be placed before the end of the first term.”