The Department of Basic Education (DBE) has raised concerns about discriminatory learner admission practices in Western Cape schools, following a national monitoring exercise requested by Parliament’s Portfolio Committee on Basic Education.
Briefing the committee on Tuesday, 18 August 2026, James Ndlebe, Chief Director for Planning and Implementation Support at the department, said the department had examined admission policies, application forms, placement criteria, waiting lists and held discussions with school principals across all nine provinces, with a particular focus on the Western Cape after concerns were raised about exclusionary practices.
The findings were tested against the Constitution, the South African Schools Act and key court judgments. Ndlebe said the department found widespread problems in how policies were developed and implemented, with very little interaction between schools and officials and limited oversight of whether school-based policies aligned with the law.
Discriminatory application practices highlighted
On placement criteria, he told committee members that many schools still prioritised high academic performers and that public ordinary schools were also using interviews, tests and score sheets that ranked children on multiple factors – practices that were not allowed in such schools.
The monitoring further exposed how admission processes favoured children from more privileged backgrounds. Some schools required proof of parental employment, while others insisted on birth certificates and then discarded applications even when the learner was already in the public school “incomplete” e-system.
“Our admission processes are very discriminatory. They are making children compete for places; children are ranked in terms of social status and all the different abilities that are considered to be very irregular,” said Ndlebe.
He added that application forms often required photographs and asked about extracurricular activities such as sports, music and leadership, effectively giving preferential treatment to children with those backgrounds.
“When you dig deeper, you’ll then realise that these waiting lists will not have children of certain racial groups in particular. Instead, they are filled with a long waiting list of children that come from low economic status, children that are not sporty in nature, and children that are missing one or two documents, still staying at home when those documents were not supposed to be used at all,” he said.
Online system flaws and SGB overreach
Ndlebe criticised the Western Cape’s online admissions system for allowing individual schools to control who gets admitted. He contrasted this with Gauteng and the Northern Cape, where automated systems place learners based on distance and feeder zones, and schools can only challenge the placements after the fact.
“In the Western Cape, schools are in control; they pick and choose who they want according to the criteria that they themselves, as schools, have developed,” he said.
On governance, Ndlebe cautioned that school governing bodies (SGBs) were overstepping their mandate by getting directly involved in placements.
“Admission is an administrative process; it’s not a governance process,” he said, noting that placement decisions belong solely to principals and School Management Teams.
Ndlebe also raised concerns about how appeals are handled, saying that decisions tended to endorse school policies rather than test them against the law.
As a response, Ndlebe said, the Department of Basic Education had rolled out joint training for officials, principals and SGBs across all provinces, spelling out what they regarded as being illegal in admissions, and had instructed that discriminatory criteria be removed from school policies and application forms.
Racial profiling denied
Alan Meyer, Western Cape Education Department Deputy Director-General for Institutional Development and Coordination, firmly denied the allegations, insisting that race was neither an explicit nor implicit factor in placements.
He said the department carried out its own review of school admission policies that focused on 10 high-demand schools that received the highest number of applications in 2025: Claremont High School, Mondale High School, Portland High School, Manyano High School, Westerford High School, Stellenberg High School, Groote Schuur High School, Parow High School, Livingstone High School and Pinelands High School.
“The departmental analysis of these 10 top schools found no evidence of racial profiling or the use of race as an admission criteria. In none of the policies was it explicitly said that this learner, if he or she comes from a particular community, will not be considered for placement at the schools,” said Meyer.
He added that the Western Cape Education Department tested these policies against four key frameworks: Section 9 of the Constitution (prohibition of unfair discrimination), Section 29 (right to basic education), the South African Schools Act, the National Admission Policy and the Western Cape’s own admissions requirements.
Migration pressures and late applications
Meyer also presented data on the 70,520 extremely late applications, which are those submitted after 1 January for the 2026 academic year.
He stated that the predominance of black African late applicants reflected internal migration, especially from the Eastern Cape to the Western Cape, as well as inflows from other provinces and neighbouring countries. He added that applications were processed on objective criteria, primarily available space, proximity to the learner’s home or parent’s workplace, and date of application.
Meyer also updated the committee on the case of Equal Education and Others vs the Head of Department, Western Cape, stating that the high court order directing changes to the Western Cape Education Department’s admissions practices has been suspended, after the department secured leave to appeal to the Supreme Court of Appeal in June 2026.
In November 2025, the Western Cape Division of the High Court ruled that aspects of the department’s learner admissions system unfairly discriminated against black, poor, and marginalised learners.
Joy Maimela, the committee chairperson, noted that the Department of Basic Education’s findings gave weight to longstanding complaints from parents and civil society. Consequently, Maimela stated that the committee would consider all available options moving forward, including escalating the matter directly to the Speaker of Parliament. DM
Takudzwa Pongweni
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