Cape Town - As the scramble for school placement intensifies across the country, the Western Cape Department of Education has projected that 116000 pupils will enter Grade 1 and 86 000 will start Grade 8 next year.
The number of unplaced pupils so far cannot be confirmed, but the department said the projected intake figures could increase owing to late enrolment and inward migration.
The SA Democratic Teachers Union (Sadtu) cautioned that schools needed to inform parents if pupils were not accepted, and to sort out their waiting lists to avoid a major problem.
“Many workers use their bonuses to buy school uniforms and they must know before school closes where learners are accepted.
“The department should identify areas like Mitchells Plain, Mfuleni, Kraaifontein, Dunoon, Lwandle, where every year learners are unplaced.
“They need to work in those areas now to ensure all those learners are placed,” said Sadtu provincial secretary Jonavon Rustin.
He said that former Model C schools would claim that they were full with 28 to 30 pupils in a class, while township schools were not afforded the same luxury because they were forced to accept up to 45 children per class.
“There needs to be a policy where there is one figure across the board to determine if a school is full or not.
“This way, the process can be fair because township schools are bursting at the seams while affluent suburbs have a lot of space. This puts severe pressure on teachers.
‘‘The department thinks principals accept more children because they want more money but that’s not the case. Most communities do not want to understand when you tell them the school is full so you cannot turn the child away,” he said.
Department spokesperson Bronagh Hammond said education districts were assisting pupils where parents requested assistance for placement.
“Learners are being placed every day. Parents can contact our district officials, who assist parents,” she said.
Hammond said more than 150 000 pupils moved to the Western Cape from other provinces over the past six years.
Meanwhile in Gauteng, parents gathered at the provincial education’s Tshwane district offices this week, to demand placement for their children.
Similar scenes were reported from other school district offices across the province.
Education MEC Panyaza Lesufi said they had summoned all district admission co-ordinators to a central location so that they could resolve all outstanding placements.