MORE and more parents are raising concern over the non-placement of their children in grades R and 8 for the year 2021.
According to the Western Cape Education Department (WCED), parents were to apply on the department's online portal by March 25, 2020.
They would then be informed after a few months on the status of their applications.
Should a child not be accepted at all schools then the district office would look for a school for the child.
Parents also had the option to appeal at the schools should their child not be accepted.
A Cape Town mother, Zurina Morgan, said her Grade 7 daughter Tahlia Morgan has been left despondent and stressed after she was rejected at all five schools she has applied to.
Tahlia attends Golden Grove Primary School in Rondebosch. They reside in Kenwyn and had applied at Wynberg Girls’ High, Rustenberg Girls, BergVliet High, Groote Schuur High, and Norman Hensilwood High.
“In June we received feedback via the WCED portal, to my dismay, all applications had been declined. I have contacted the district office every single day, but there was no answer. I suppose it was because we were under lockdown.
“I then called every single day, no answer. Eventually, when I got hold of the secretaries at the schools I was told to contact the department,” said Morgan.
She said she made contact with a school she had applied to and was told there was no space. Morgan said when she did finally get hold of the district office she was advised to take her daughter to a school in Athlone, which is further from home than the other schools.
“What is mind-boggling is the fact that we reside in Kenwyn, in the centre of the Southern Suburbs, a stone’s throw away from all the schools which we applied to. I also know there are kids who are travelling from far to attend these schools. How are they accepted?
“My daughter is so despondent and stressed out at the moment as she has no clue what she will be doing next year. Most of her peers have been accepted and they rave about it and she says she feels uninvolved. In actual fact, I can even say that Tahlia feels depressed,” said Morgan.
WCED spokesperson Bronagh Hammond said: “Often parents apply only at some of the most popular schools in the province. Some schools receive far more applications than they can accommodate. Therefore at the most popular schools, there will always be disappointment where pupils cannot be accommodated.”
The department received more than 46 000 application for Grade R, over 27 000 applications for Grade 1 and over 66 000 applications for Grade 8.