Johannesburg - The Gauteng Department of Education (GDE) said it would resume online registration for school places on Wednesday, but Afriforum warned the new system of admissions for 2017 “may not work”.
Afriforum project coordinator for education Carien Flower said: “Afriforum regards the platform as an attempt by the department to intervene in parents' free choice about where they enroll their children”.
Compulsory online registration started for the first time in the province on Monday, but the system crashed the same day and could not be re-booted.
Announcing that the system had crashed, Gauteng MEC for Education Panyaza Lesufi said: “We received 600 hits per second and it was beyond our capacity. Parents must not panic”.
He said the system would be operational on Wednesday morning. Afriforum said it wrote a letter to the department demanding answers about the online registration process. “Another problem is that many schools have already held their open days in April, during which parents have enrolled their children in schools of their choices,” said Afriforum's Flower.
“We would like to know what will happen with registration and registration fees that parents have already paid.”
African News Agency