As of 5.30pm on Thursday, March 16, 2023, the Western Cape Education Department had already received applications for 40 694 students for the 2024 school year. This number has reportedly now surpassed 51 000.
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Online applications opened last week and will remain open until 11.59pm on 14 April 2023.
The overall number of individual applications to schools received in the first four days of the application window was 137 417, with parents applying to more than one school for their children.
According to Education MEC David Maynier, the numbers are encouraging, and while the department has encountered a few technical challenges along the way, the decision to abandon the national government State Information and Technology Agency (SITA) system has proven to be the correct one.
“While SITA services experienced outages last week, our admissions system has remained up and running since the application window opened,” Maynier said.
“We urge parents not to be alarmed if they face any technical difficulties,” he added. “All problems can and will be dealt with by our staff, and we thank parents for their patience and for heeding our call to apply on time this year.”
Applications can be submitted online here.
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