File picture: Courtney Africa/African News Agency(ANA)
THE NORTHERN Cape MEC for Education, Zolile Monakali, has advised parents and legal guardians to accept or decline an offer of school placement in order to fast-track admissions and placements for the 2021 academic year.
This is while some Kimberley parents indicated that they were still awaiting the outcome of their admission applications.
“We still need to buy uniforms and are worried that we will be informed that all the schools are full next year,” said one anxious city parent on Monday.
Monakali stated that there was a low number of placements of pupils in the Northern Cape.
“We are concerned that we have a large number of parents who have not accepted the offers of placement. Of the 18,000 offers of placement issued, only 6,449 parents have successfully accepted the offers of placement. This will further delay the completion of the placement of pupils for the 2021 academic year,” said Monakali.
He added that the highest number of successful placement of pupils was at Afrikaans-medium schools in all districts of the Province.
“This is because there is less demand for Afrikaans-medium schools in terms of admission applications. However, there is still a lot of work to be done at English-medium schools, where districts are fast-tracking placement.”
Monakali indicated that the provincial Department of Education wanted to avoid long queues of parents and pupils struggling to secure accommodation at the beginning of the new year.
“We appeal to parents to log in on the online admission system to accept the offer of placement. This is the only way to help us process and finalise the admission of their children.”
He encouraged parents who had lost or misplaced their log-in details of their profiles on the online system to contact the district offices as soon as possible.
Monakali reported that the admission of all pupils would be prioritised early in the new year.
“The system-generated SMS has not yet been sent to all parents due to some schools not having completed the verification of all applications. The provincial office is exploring all avenues to assist schools to finalise this matter.”