The Gauteng provincial government has raised concern about perceptions that former Model C schools offered the best education while those in the townships were hopeless.
Education MEC Matome Chiloane said this perceptions, contributed to the province’s learner placement frustration.
Chiloane officially launched the Braamfischer Primary School in Soweto and said learners whose parents either did not apply on time and or are rejecting the schools that have been offered.
He said more than three hundred thousand children whose parents applied on time have already been placed.
He said most of the 14 000 children still seeking placement did not will also be accommodated.
“We had more than 360 thousand and we have managed to place them. As you would have seen here today there’s still some who are yet to be admitted and those are largely because of not wanting the schools that they have been allocated,” said Chiloane.
He said there’s a perception that township schools don’t offer the best education which must be countered.
“Our people are queuing at the former Model C schools because they believe those offer the same education but it’s just perception and this is proven even in the results we released yesterday township schools carried the province, they carried us with the percentage, in terms of distinctions and even the best learner in Gauteng came from a township school in Kwa-Thema. On the other hand Model C schools did not give us what we wanted, its just perceptions that we have to keep engaging with parents on but we guarantee them that wherever we place their children, they will get the best education,”said the MEC.
Margret Mulaudzi lives less than a kilometre from Braamfischer Primary School has been going up and down the whole week battling to secure space for her two children who were previously in another school in an area that the family previously stayed at.
On Wednesday Mulaudzi was told to come the following day ( Thursday) and expressed concern that placing them elsewhere would is not an option.
“They were going to another school but we left that area and their sister is starting high school here so they can walk together. If they are not accepted it would mean I will have to pay for transport and it’s three of them,” she said.