Cape Town - Almost all the Western Cape’s schools are full, but education district offices are still receiving requests from parents whose children have not yet been placed.
The metro north education district, which includes areas such as Durbanville, Bellville and the Helderberg Basin, have had the highest demand for places, said Jessica Shelver, spokeswoman for education MEC Debbie Schäfer.
In Mfuleni there were 127 children who needed placement.
This month the Cape Argus reported that a group of parents who were desperate to enrol their children at Mfuleni Primary had staged a sit-in at the school.
Parents said the school had told them it was full and couldn’t accommodate their children.
At the time, principal Vela Ndobongwana said there had been an influx into the area every year when school re-opened.
On Monday Shelver said: “Our officials did an inspection of the classrooms at Mfuleni Primary. The library and staff room have been identified as temporary options for classrooms until we can deliver mobile classrooms.”
She said the department would have an indication of how many children still needed to be placed once it received the results of a survey of all schools.
“We are urging parents to be patient and work with the Western Cape Education Department so we can place their children as quickly as possible. The department did continually warn of delays if parents did not enrol their children on time. Our officials are under a tremendous amount of pressure placing pupils whose parents did not enrol their children and their co-operation would speed up the process.”
Some pupils, who registered for school last year, had not arrived for classes this year. Shelver said if a child had been absent for 10 consecutive days and attempts had been made to contact the parents, a school could deregister the child in terms of national policy. This could free up spaces for children who had not been placed.
“I advise pupils to report to school immediately. There is no room for complacency and they and their parents need to take their education seriously.”
Over the past few years a trend has emerged where some pupils, away from home for the holidays, returned to school only when their parents had been paid for January.
“We hope we will not see this trend again this year because almost all schools are full.”
The department is moving 98 mobile classrooms from schools where they are no longer needed to schools where they are needed.
Cape Argus