Lesufi: Placement of pupils at 96%
The number of pupils in Gauteng who have not been placed in schools have been reduced from 34 000 to 9 618.
Gauteng Education MEC Panyaza Lesufi briefed the media on Sunday on the latest developments in the placement process.
Lesufi says of the remaining pupils who need to be placed, 3210 are in grade one and 6 408 in grade eight.
Lesufi says there is enough space to place everyone, but parents have rejected offers.
"I want to put it on record, we have enough capacity to accept all learners. The challenge is parents want to choose a certain school and that's we've got limitation. Where we are the number of classrooms we have can accommodate the learners that we have.”
He also says the process is also slow due to the high number of grade 1 and 8 pupils coming in.
"Good people, the numbers are huge and I share the frustrations of parents. It's not the problem of the system is that numbers are huge.
"Everyone wants to bring their children to Gauteng".
Lesufi says the department has also identified schools with additional spaces that can be transformed into classes.
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"We have principles to expend the sizes of the school (to accommodate more learners). This is not by overcrowding the classroom.
"For example for a classroom that was, say, a gym instead of having it as a gym have it as a classroom. We will out the new teacher, new stationery, new furniture. But there is no school that has been allowed to out 40 learners and above.
"Procurement processes are underway to assist with provisions of mobile classrooms to the identified schools"
He adds that the department is anticipating 18 000 late registrations.
"For now our decision is that we'll deal with that aspect once we've concluded placement of the 9000 remaining learners because it makes no sense to open for late registration when we still 9000 people who do not have spaces.
"But they must know that when we open for late registration which will be around January we will open for schools which are not full".
Lesufi says the whole process will be complete by end November.