By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
Gauteng Education MEC Matome Chiloane says his department has already placed over 99 percent of all complete online applications for the 2024 school year, saying only 0.1 percent of parents are yet to accept placement offers.
The placement of applicants commenced on September 4th and will close when all applicants are placed.
Chiloane was addressing the media in Midrand, north of Johannesburg, where he gave an update on learner placements for the 2024 Online Admissions.
“We had received 302 981 applications of which 273 186 were complete applications and these are the parents who complied fully. We had another 32 000 of that number which were incomplete applications and did not submit all the necessary documents that were required so from the complete applications we have managed to place 99.8% of them.”
Chiloane further continued to say, he is confident that there will be an extremely high pass rate for Matric class of 2023 in Gauteng.
All 15 Gauteng Districts performed above 80 percent, with four districts being part of the Top 10 Performing Districts in the country.
Chiloane says he believes that matriculants were fully prepared to achieve excellent results.
“Our learners really did put effort and we are confident of the results. We are very confident as a province that we will get a very high number of our learners passing and the target still remains and we anticipate at least but we want everyone to pass, that is our ultimate goal as a province. We anticipate good results from our learners because we prepared them very well and they themselves prepared very well throughout the term and whole schooling year.”
He has also appealed to communities to work with his department in order to prevent schools from being vandalised during the festive season.
Matome said society’s ability to make progress is dependent on the quality of education it has access to.
“We are appealing to our communities to protect our schools because this is your future. Every society’s ability to advance or not depends on the quality of schools.
“How are we going to advance if the infrastructure that is supposed to support the development is being destroyed?”
Chiloane said while the department has drawn up a school safety programme, it will only make a difference if the various communities are on board.
“We have a comprehensive school safety programme, but it will not be impactful if communities are not on board. That includes whistleblowers and parents standing at the school gate to check if everything is alright.”
Meanwhile Minister Angie Motshekga revealed around 900 946 learners in 5 635 schools need learner transport. Of these, only 707 069 learners in 4 196 schools were transported at the end of the second quarter of 2023/24 financial year.
This means that over 193 000 students, or 21.5% of those eligible, did not receive the transportation they needed.
Motshekga said, learner transport programmes were funded through budget allocations to each province, with provinces responsible for the provisioning and prioritisation of scholar transport programmes.
She said financial constraints in provinces had limited how many children it could help.
The department urged provincial governments to build more schools to reduce the need for scholar transport.
“The learner transport programme at inception was an interim solution to provide access to education where there is a shortage of schools.
Provinces have been requested to collaborate with infrastructure units to build schools where there is a higher demand for learner transport programme and relief pressure on the transportation of learners, it added.
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