The Gauteng Department of Education (GDE) has begun placing learners for grades one and eight for the 2025 academic year, with SMS as the main communication tool to inform parents and guardians.
As of today, the GDE says, SMS messages will be sent out on a continual basis, until all learners are placed.
Not all applicants will receive an SMS on the first day of the placement period, but parents and guardians who successfully completed their applications can expect an SMS with a placement offer from today and throughout the course of the year.
Parents will have seven days to either accept an offer as final, or provisionally accept it by logging onto the admission’s site using their login credentials, it states.
Education MEC Matome Chiloane explains: “It must be noted that when a parent accepts an offer from a school as final, the learner is placed at that school. Placement offers that are accepted as final cannot be reversed.
“Parents who applied to more than one school are encouraged to accept offers from the maximum of five schools they selected during the application period.
“Accepting an offer will allow for more possible offers to choose from where available in your selection of schools, while maintaining your placement. If your next placement offer is accepted while awaiting other offers, your previous offer will no longer be available.
“If no further placement offers are made to the parent within seven days, this means all other schools applied to have reached capacity and the learner is placed at the school where the last offer was accepted while awaiting further offers.”
In Gauteng, the provincial education department is in charge of placing learners in schools for those two grades via its online admissions system.
The department introduced the schools online registration system for learners in 2016, under the leadership of premier Panyaza Lesufi. This was part of the department’s effort to prevent long queues and encourage a tech-savvy school registration process.
According to the GDE, the 2025 online admissions system closed with a total of 828 364 applications, with 353 409 for grade one and 474 955 for learners applying for grade eight.
Of these, 325 858 applicants submitted complete applications and will receive offers of placement from today; 19 032 applications were incomplete and will not receive offers of placement.
When the 325 858 applicants are placed, the department says it will move to address the incomplete and late applications before the end of the year.
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