Cape Town - The Western Cape Education Department's online admission portal experienced some hiccups this week after parents reported having difficulties with processing their child's application.
The WCED announced on Monday that parents and caregivers may proceed with applications for Grade 1 and Grade 8 pupils for the 2023 academic year, only to be met with technical issues that resulted in the site crashing.
Some parents took to Twitter to raise concerns, angry at the constant obstacles faced with accessing the site.
@KarageorgiadesV said: “Access to education is so difficult in this country, and you just made it even harder for all those disadvantaged families trying to get their child education. This online application process is hard for those with good internet access. Imagine those with none.”
A parent from Vrygrond, Edwina Adams, said that she did not know where to start.
“Issues with the site have had me stressed the whole week. From getting the documentation to getting access to the internet, and then experiencing such issues with the little that I have, it is not on. It is really taking time to adjust to this new norm, and such hiccups are not making it easier for those of us in disadvantaged communities,” said Adams.
Parents for Equal Education SA founder Vanessa le Roux said that the online system would continue to affect those in poorer communities if the alternative manual application is not considered.
“In all honesty, there are a lot of errors in this online system, and poorer communities will pay the price if the alternative manual application continues to be disregarded. Because with all honesty, what was the issue with it in the first place?
“We had several issues with it. For instance, we had a child who was registered online, the child had feedback online, but the application never reached the school. These types of mistakes shouldn’t be happening. It will be easy for parents in suburban areas to be able to fix the matter, but those children whose parents are not technology-savvy will fall through the cracks, especially with the community already facing battles with things such as gang violence and crime,” said Le Roux.
WCED spokesperson Bronagh Hammond said that the WCED online system experienced issues was due to the Oracle platforms across the Western Cape government, as well as other minor issues with applicants being given an internal service error.
“Prior to the opening of the admission site, our service providers increased the gigabytes of RAM and other enhancements to manage the application activity. This past week, the team worked further on the site, which has resulted in improved performance. Despite the challenges experienced over the past few days, thousands of parents were able to apply.
“Given some of the issues these past few days, some parents were frustrated when the system threw out an error message, and understandably so. We apologise for the inconvenience and are hopeful that the system will continue to function optimally these coming weeks as we approach the April 15 deadline.
“While we would prefer that parents do make use of the online system for a variety of reasons, we do understand that some parents or caregivers are restricted in terms of accessibility to equipment. That is why the WCED has arranged for parents to apply via our district offices or the pop-ups by the WCED at shopping malls and schools.
“Some schools have communicated to parents that they will be opening their labs to parents to apply. The pop-ups will assist parents directly to apply using our IT equipment, and paper-based applications will be made available if queues get too long and will be captured online thereafter by our staff,” said Hammond.
Weekend Argus