Johannesburg - The Gauteng Department of Education has shut down 84 schools in the past two years – 79 of these in 2013.
Over the same period, in one financial year, more than 20 schools were built – with costs running into hundreds of millions of rand.
The main reason the schools, which tend to be in township and rural areas, were shut down is because of dwindling pupil numbers.
This seesaw pattern is commonplace in the province, whose department of education absorbs an increasing number of new pupil numbers each year.
Announcing the findings of last year’s 10-day headcount, an annual survey conducted on the 10th day of each academic year to capture the statistics that make up the school system, the department said it was difficult to keep track of families moving into the province, pursuing job opportunities.
The department’s deputy director for planning and policy, Albert Chanee, said that because of the fluidity in the movement of families, it was difficult for the department to establish where new schools were most needed.
“When people come to the province, the settlement patterns are not clear. As a result, it is difficult to plan where to position schools,” Chanee said.
“Although we know in a very predictable way the system is going to grow by 60 000 pupils annually, we don’t know where these pupils are going to settle. That’s the reason why we sometimes have to be responsive with what we all don’t like – prefabricated classrooms, mobile classrooms and so on,” Chanee said.
As was the case at the beginning of every academic year, the department was currently finding space for late and first-time applicants.
To date, as many as 26 926 late-registration applications had been recorded, and of these, 19 020 had been placed.
The number of late applications received early last week totalled 21 145.
Last year, the department processed 20 000 late applications, and opened 17 new schools last January to accommodate the influx.
For this year, 16 new schools were built.
The high-pressure zones for this year’s late and first-time applications are the Joburg district cluster, Ekudibeng cluster and Tshwaga cluster.
The department’s spokeswoman, Nanagolo Leopeng, said they had told principals of schools affected by late registration to develop catch-up plans so that pupils aren’t affected by their late registration.
Meanwhile, the Department of Basic Education has ex-tended the deadline for the registration of supplementary exams for the 2014 matric class.
The initial closing date was last Wednesday, but it has been extended to Friday.
The department said the extension was to allow, among others, pupils implicated in the mass copying investigation to register provisionally pending the outcome of the probe.
The Star