Nearly one week into the new school year, and thousands of learners have not yet commenced their 2025 academic journey. Even though schools reopened last week, more than 2 000 grade one and grade eight pupils are still awaiting placement.

The Western Cape Education Department (WCED) confirmed the latest tally, adding that it is still receiving hundreds more extremely late applications. The department’s spokesperson, Bronagh Hammond clarified that placement is in progress to ensure all learners are accommodated where possible.

“Since the start of the year, we have received hundreds of new extremely late applications. While we are placing learners as well every day, the challenge with the extremely late learners is that we do not know where they will seek placement or what their grades, languages, ages or subject choices will be,” Hammond stated.

POPULATION DENSITY

The issue has become a yearly challenge, as the province’s population continues to grow.

In the department’s annual report for the 2023/24 financial year, it shared that the province has seen a significant increase in population (1.114 million individuals or 18.3%) from 2013 to 2022. An uptick, which it says, points to both domestic expansion and emigration. Furthermore, an influx of an additional 1.116 million individuals are anticipated to move to the province in the coming decade.

“We do want to be clear that Western Cape schools are full and we appeal for patience from parents submitting new applications. We also appeal to parents applying for grade one and eight for 2026 to take note of the March/April application period so that they do not find themselves in a position of applying extremely late, which does not benefit neither themselves, their children or the department in terms of its planning and placement procedures,” Hammond concluded.

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