Race to build new classrooms
WCED: Classrooms.
The Western Cape Education Department is racing against time to complete more than 100 classrooms to meet its month-end deadline to deliver 842 classrooms to ease placement woes.
Calls have been made for the department to act fast as 487 Grade 1 and Grade 8 learners have yet to be placed in schools and the March 31 deadline to complete these classrooms coincides with the end of the first term.
The department is also preparing to open online applications for next year, from March 13 to April 14.
The department said from the number of applications that were on time, 19 are yet to be placed. And for late applications, 42 learners were yet to be accommodated.
The WCED said they also had to contend with more than 4 000 applications received between January and February this year and were able to place 3 619 learners.
WCED spokesperson Kerry Mauchline said they were on track to deliver 842 classrooms by March 31, as 721 have already been installed.
“We understand that the placement process can cause frustration for parents, and we ask for their patience and assure them that we are doing everything we can to ensure their children’s placement is finalised as soon as possible,” she said.
Mauchline said parents of these learners were either unreachable or had rejected the offer of placement.
“The challenge with late applications is that we do not know how many late applications we will receive, where the extremely late placement will be required, the grades, language, and ages of the learners, and the specific subjects and specialised needs of the learners,” she said.