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Gauteng Admissions: Why it was set up, where things went wrong and how it was fixed

How did a site meant to be a fast, more efficient way for parents with children going to grades one and eight in 2017 to apply at schools (and for the Gauteng Department of Education to better monitor allocations) turn into a virtual nightmare for all involved?

The short answer is – servers.

MEC of Education Panyaza Lesufi held a media briefing today to explain in depth about why the department had set the site up, where everything went wrong and how issues were dealt with.

Why the shift to an online system

“We initiated the online system last year as a pilot project so that we can relieve parents of the stress of having to wake up early in the morning and queue outside our schools, just to hand over an application,” Lesufi said.

“We also had serious difficulties in preparing for academic years because we didn’t have the information that would indicate to us how many new teachers we’d need to employ, how many new desks, textbooks, buildings and classrooms we’d need to pay for,” he went on.

“We took the conscious decision that we needed an online registration site that will allow us to gather this information and ensure that we have a smooth allocation of learners in our classrooms.”

Although the department had originally chosen to outsource the creation of the website, it decided to do everything in house after a team of its employees volunteered to put the work in.

The department decided to carry on with the traditional application system while it piloted the Gauteng Admissions website.

“On the basis of that, we were quite convinced that the future is bright and we could go online full scale starting this year,” Lesufi said.

Where it all went wrong and how it was fixed

The department had hosted the site on its own servers and was ready for launch on 11th April, allowing parents to register their details before being allowed to apply today.

This however did not go as planned as the system could only accommodate 600 visitors per second, while receiving thousands more hits per second.

Lesufi and his team then decided to approach the State Information Technology Agency (SITA) and use their servers to host the site.

This is when the online registration period was suspended and the site taken down a few days later so parents could do everything at once as soon as the site was meant to go live at 8am yesterday.

However, before the site was meant to go live at that time, SITA expressed concerns over the huge amounts of traffic as its servers could only handle 3 000 visitors per second.

It was then decided the night before last that the department would approach Vodacom and ask the mobile network to host the site on its servers, to allow a capacity of 20 000 visitors per second, thus pushing the site’s relaunch to 10am.

One of the biggest issues parents reported experiencing on the site was the site inaccurately allocating schools for them to apply at.

Ideally, when using a work or email address, the schools nearest to that address were supposed to pop up. But some parents were only given options of schools over 30 kilometres from them.

The department had resolved to correct this by installing a GPS locator on the site, which, when parents type in the name of the desired school near their work or home address, will pick up the location of the school and input it as the school where they would apply.

“I received a call [yesterday morning] at 2am letting me know that the loading of the site was successful, except for the GPS co-ordinates function. I was advised that we could live at 8am, but my sixth sense made me feel that I didn’t think I want to risk that, so I gave them more time to sort that out,” a visibly tired Lesufi explained.

The launch was then pushed back to 10am, but another issue around GPS co-ordinates cropped up: the site was picking up schools within a radius of around 20km of the user instead of 5km, as planned.

Lesufi then delayed the launch by a further four hours to correct the co-ordinates function particularly taking into consideration the fact that many parents in informal settlements live in areas where homes and buildings have no formal address.

“It was going to disadvantage them, hence the 10am deadline could not be met. We needed to drop all the co-ordinates and use reliable ones to say you [parents] don’t need to have an address to get a school… that decision meant the entire system needed to be re-programmed and that was at 9:30am, approaching 10am,” he said.

The system back end was back up by 1pm and working as the department wanted it to, and the site was launched to the public at 2:30pm.

“Teething problems” to be expected

Although issues seem to be resolved, Lesufi warned that there will probably be a number of “teething problems” experienced, especially now in the beginning and towards the closing of the application period on midnight, 1st June.

Blind parents to be accommodated with a braille system

According to Lesufi, blind parents who have children without any visual disabilities and are attending ordinary schools, expressed that they felt left out as the system does not take their disability into consideration.

Lesufi said the department will be meeting with blind parents to prioritise loading their details on the system using braille keyboards.

No more first come, first served

“We are now relinquishing the first come, first served rule” Lesufi said. At the beginning, the first person to have successfully gotten through on the website would be able to secure a place for their child at a school before someone else who had logged in later.

“We’re reverting back to what we call waiting list A and B. All those in waiting list A, which simply means that you’ve applied at a school close to you, we assure you that your child will be automatically enrolled at that school on the basis that you stay or work within 5km of that school and your child qualifies to be admitted into it in terms of language etc.,” according to Lesufi.

Once the system has accommodated those on waiting list A, those on waiting list B will be migrated to the list A, if there is still space at the school they wish to apply at, otherwise they’ll be allocated a second and third option.

“It’s no longer the person who logs in first gets a space, it’s the person on waiting list A that will get a space based on their address or the fact that they already have one child attending at a school,” Lesufi said.

Parents forewarned

Parents are urged to apply before the June 1st deadline, to avoid disappointment. Placement confirmations will be done between 24th June and 24th July.

Lesufi warned that parents heading to schools to try an apply there the old way would be disappointed. He reiterated that those without internet and computer access or who need assistance, must head over to a school or library near them to apply.

“You’ll never find an application form in our schools. We’ve asked all public libraries across the country to come on board and thankfully, they’ve agreed. We’ve also requested schools and district offices to develop help desks and all our municipalities have free WiFi zones, so we encourage people to go to those zones and connect,” he said.

The pain may be too much now, frustrations might be heavy but the future looks bright. I want to take this opportunity and humble ourselves and apologise to the people of Gauteng and South Africa at large for the delay,” Lesufi said.

 

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