Overview
- Large crowds formed at district offices as parents sought last‑minute placements, reporting delayed communication, missing documents and relocation complications, with some calling for the online system to be scrapped.
- Officials say about 3,000 Grade 1 and Grade 8 learners are still unplaced out of 358,000 placements completed, with pressure points identified in Ekurhuleni, Johannesburg and certain inner grades.
- The department attributes much of the backlog to parental errors such as late applications, applying outside residential districts, transferring between schools and choosing unaffordable schools.
- Negotiations with schools are under way to add capacity and create additional spaces, and the department says these talks will not drag into February as it pushes to wrap Grade 1 placements this week.
- Questions over the online system’s reliability persist after some parents were allocated spaces but later found their children missing from school lists, and a teachers’ union says schools are not practically ready to open.