This is the second year that the Gauteng Department of Education (GDE) is relying on an online application system for Grade 1 and Grade 8 – the years in which children are received into primary school and high school respectively. The system was launched in 2016, but couldn’t stand up to the user volumes, leaving many applicants deeply concerned about securing a place at the school of their choice. Oupa Bodibe, spokesperson for the GDE, candidly discusses the decision-making that took place and the processes implemented last year.

“We had realised, from a data perspective, we didn’t have sufficient information about space demands [at schools]. As a result we had to project demand by looking at past experiences as well as population growth numbers,” he says. “That’s not precise information and even the ‘current’ data we do get comes very late, because it’s manual and the districts have to aggregate data from all the schools.”