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The Gauteng department of education has received 805,688 applications for grade 1 and grade 8 for the 2027 academic year, putting further pressure on the province to place pupils.
Gauteng education MEC Lebogang Maile on Sunday provided an update on the status of admissions and placements for the 2027 academic year.
Maile said the department recorded the applications during the online admissions period, which closed at midnight on Friday.
Schools in Pretoria recorded the highest demand.
Hoërskool Langenhoven in Tshwane West received the highest number of grade 8 applications, with 3,462 received, followed by Alberton High School with 2,756 and Katlehong Secondary School with 2,747.
In the case of grade 1 applications, Laerskool Akasia in Pretoria North received 1,355, followed by Palmridge Primary School with 1,330 and Alston Primary School with 1,207.
Maile said the figures highlighted the pressure on available school capacity and the need to rethink how existing public school capacity is used.
“We cannot sustain a situation where one public school is overwhelmed by thousands of applications while another public school, sometimes only a few kilometres away, has available classrooms or declining enrolment,” Maile said.
Pupils needed to be distributed more logically across the public school system, he said, while acknowledging that popular schools could not continue to absorb more pupils indefinitely.
We cannot sustain a situation where one public school is overwhelmed by thousands of applications while another public school, sometimes only a few kilometres away, has available classrooms or declining enrolment.
— Lebogang Maile, Gauteng education MEC
Maile said placement would be based on available capacity and a prescribed order of priority, including the pupil’s home address within the school’s feeder zone, proximity to the school and whether a sibling already attends the school.
If none of the schools selected by a parent has available space, the department may make an offer at the next closest school with capacity, Maile said.
Parents will have seven days to accept or decline a transfer placement offer. They may also object to a transfer placement and, if necessary, appeal against the outcome.
The placement process is scheduled to begin on October 15, with offers sent by SMS to the cellphone numbers used during registration.
Maile said offers would not all be issued on the first day because available spaces are limited. Placement will continue through the remainder of the year until all pupils have been placed.
Parents with outstanding documents have until noon on September 11 to submit or upload certified copies. The MEC said proof of home address was particularly important because it is used to determine placement.
Maile said Gauteng also needed to rethink how it delivers infrastructure as population growth, migration, housing developments and urbanisation continue to change where communities are located.
He said the province should explore public-private partnerships to help deliver schools and other education infrastructure faster, while also considering prefabricated and mobile classrooms where additional capacity is urgently required.
Mobile classrooms, he said, should be viewed as a bridging measure rather than a replacement for permanent infrastructure.
The MEC also raised the possibility of leasing mobile classrooms instead of buying them in areas where enrolment pressures may be temporary or shift geographically.
“Leasing is not automatically cheaper, and ownership is not automatically better,” Maile said, adding that each option should be subjected to a value-for-money assessment.
The province also needed to accelerate e-learning and appropriate hybrid learning systems to help ease pressure on physical classrooms.
However, he stressed that technology should complement rather than replace teachers and schools.
He emphasised that the immediate challenge is to place every pupil for the 2027 academic year. The longer-term goal was to build a public education system where parents do not feel compelled to compete for a small number of highly sought-after schools.
TimesLIVE
Mmatumelo Lebjane
www.timeslive.co.za
