- Parents in the Western Cape are growing concerned over the fact that many children have received unsuccessful applications at multiple schools.
- Many children have received acceptances from multiple schools and are double or even triple booked.
- The Western Cape Department of Education says that once parents start accepting offers, more than 30 000 placements will become available and parents should be patient.
Parents have been showing concern about the now-closed admission process to get learners in Grades 1 and 8 registered at schools in the Western Cape.
Hypertext has been following the process for the Western Cape province to accept new learners from Grades 1 and 8 for the 2025 school year. The province opened applications earlier than other provinces to ensure that all children were placed in time.
It has had recurring issues in the past where learners still require placement at schools despite the academic year already in full swing. Now that no more new learners can register on the system, the province’s education department has been urging parents to accept placement offers as soon as they can to free up other students to receive placement offers.
This is because many learners have received multiple acceptance offers at the time (and are “double parked”) while many other learners have been turned down multiple times.
“The ‘double parked’ students procedure makes no sense,” a concerned reader told Hypertext, “It is not only cruel but also unfair.”
“Parents must select a first, second, and third choice when applying for schools. If said child is chosen for one of these options, it makes no sense to still allow them a second choice too while the Dept. knows full well that there is a major shortage of places at government schools,” they continued.
“We appeal to parents to confirm their places as soon as possible, as this will free up places for other learners. This is especially important when a learner has received offers from multiple schools. Once these ‘double parked’ learners are confirmed to a specific school, the places at the other schools can be offered to other learners,” the Western Cape Department of Education said in a statement published last week.
When Hypertext brought these concerned comments to the department’s attention, a spokesperson merely told us to read the same statement we previously covered.
The reader told us that many parents are receiving ‘unsuccessful: oversubscribed’ warnings after they applied to schools. One user on X had received 10 unsuccessful messages after they applied for their child at 10 schools across the province.
Most of them were oversubscribed, with some unsuccessful due to being put on a waiting list.
Another user had the same issue, with several unsuccessful applications due to oversubscribed schools. “Oversubscribed” means that the school has no more places open as it has booked places for learners already.
The department is now telling parents to be patient and to stay in touch with the schools they are looking at, as more than 30 000 spaces are expected to open in the coming weeks as double parked learners accept placements at one school.
“Some learners have been accepted at more than 1 school and once they confirm acceptance, over 30 000 spaces will become available in the next few weeks,” it said on an X post, which is a reiteration of the statement it issued last week.
However, there are concerns that for the parents who have to wait, unsuccessful applications can cause unnecessary stress for themselves and their children.
“[The admissions system] has no regard for the major stress this puts especially Grade 7 students under, not knowing if they will be able to get into a school for high school. The system needs a serious relook,” the reader continued.
They believe it does not have the child’s best interests at heart.
However, the department has said on more than one occasion that it will work with parents and schools to ensure that all learners are placed before classes begin in 2025. Given how much earlier this process began in the Western Cape compared to other provinces, and the fact that the province is allowing several phases of late admissions, it seems to be attempting to keep this promise.
But the fact is that the province has struggled to place all learners in the past, due to budgetary issues and overfilled public schools. Last year, the department pleaded for parents to be patient as it said it would fight to place all learners on time.
