Durban - Parents who were forced to move provinces or towns at short notice, when school admissions had already been finalised, would have their children accommodated.
However, securing a place at the first choice of school was not a guarantee, education officials and governing body associations said on Monday.
Many schools did set aside a few places each year to cater for such emergencies, and provincial education departments did have the obligation of ensuring that every child was placed in a classroom.
“Approach the school you want your child to be enrolled at, and if you aren’t able to get in, approach the provincial education department,” said Tim Gordon, the head of the Governing Body Foundation.
“If the school closest to you can’t take your child, go to the next closest, and try there as well.”
He stressed that both parents and schools needed to be reasonable, and that a parent who was sensible in their approach had a much better chance of securing a place than one who was “demanding or belligerent”.
“In the end, if your child has no place at all, and is still of compulsory school-going age, the department has a constitutional obligation to place the child somehow and somewhere. It is very seldom that a school is genuinely so full that it can’t take just one more child,” he said.
“However, parents must understand that the chances of getting into the most popular schools in the province are usually much smaller.
“These schools are likely to have a number of children who applied on time still on the waiting list, which certainly complicates the issue,” he said.
Paul Colditz, the head of the Federation of Governing Bodies of South African Schools, said that schools belonging to the organisation were advised to keep one or two spaces open per grade.
As soon as parents became aware of the possibility of relocating, they should contact schools in the area to where they would be moving.
“Certain schools being full is a problem, because of the huge difference between the number of functional and dysfunctional schools,” Colditz said.
He suggested that parents who were unable to finalise a lease agreement or offer to purchase property at short notice should consider keeping their child at their present school for a little longer, while get their name on to the waiting list.
The national and KwaZulu-Natal education departments have committed their various district offices to helping parents who were battling.
“There is no negotiation; all they need to do is to approach the district office of the area and ask for assistance when schools open.
“The district office will determine, based on available spaces, where the learner should be accommodated,” said Basic Education Department spokesman Elijah Mhlanga.
The Mercury