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After AfriForum has sent a lawyer’s letter to Matome Chiloane, the Gauteng MEC for Education, last week to bring problems with this year’s online school placement system in Gauteng to his attention, it was determined that the problems are much wider than initially suspected. While complaints were mainly received from parents in Pretoria and Centurion, inquiries and complaints are now increasingly pouring in from more concerned parents from Johannesburg about incorrect or no placements of learners for the 2026 school year.

These complaints indicate that the problems with the online placement system have not been corrected as the Gauteng Education Department undertook to do last Thursday. Furthermore, hundreds of parents are in the dark about where their children should go to school next year, while the Department of Education is offering little to no help to parents and is only advising them to be patient.

“We receive calls and emails daily from parents who have still not received any feedback about their children’s placements – some have already applied on day one, submitted all their documents and still have not received any feedback from the Department,” says Carien Bloem, Head of Education Projects at AfriForum.

“The fact that similar problems are now also occurring in Johannesburg highlights that this problem is not just limited to Pretoria and Centurion but is occurring throughout the province.”

It is also a major concern that many parents only find out by chance that their children have been placed when they visit the Department’s website themselves – without any notification via SMS or email. Other parents mention that they have received “provisional placements” at schools that are not their preferred schools, while their preferred schools have available places.

“The system is supposed to make the process easier for parents and schools, but instead it seems to cause confusion, uncertainty and frustration,” says Bloem.

“We are concerned that the Gauteng Education Department is still unable to manage the process transparently and reliably. This just proves once again why AfriForum is an advocate that schools should take control of their registration process themselves and then pass on placements to the Department and not the other way around.”

AfriForum is still awaiting feedback in response to the lawyer’s letter calling on the MEC to urgently provide clarity on the status of the online placements, the communication process to parents and what the process is to correct the incorrect placements.

“Parents deserve honest and timely communication about their children’s placements. The continued lack of feedback and transparency is simply unacceptable,” says Bloem.

AfriForum encourages parents to continue to send any problems with placements to onderwys@afriforum.co.za.

Issued by AfriForum