This innovation is the original initiative of the Gauteng Department of Education (GDE). For the first time in Gauteng, all parents of children going into Grade 1 or 8 in Public schools were enabled to apply for places for their children for three (3) schools (first, second and third choice), either close to where they live or where they work, without having to take time off work, and without even having to visit the school. The Parent provided their own and their child's details online and the Application then interrogated a Geographic Information System (GIS) and identified the appropriate schools.

The parents could apply from the convenience of their own home and receive confirmation that their application was receiving attention by SMS (Short Message Service), or check on the status of their application on the Internet. The Department thus ensures that the Admissions Regulations were strictly adhered to and that no Parent was turned away from schools for spurious, illegal reasons. Parents and learners were therefore given a convenient and equal opportunity to apply to schools of their choice.

A central database hosted at the State Information Technology Agency (SITA) enabled the Gauteng Department of Education (GDE) for the first time, to immediately identify the most popular schools in areas of high demand for schooling, the numbers of applications per school, cluster, circuit, district or the total for the Province.

This could be done online from any location. Demographic trends could also be identified, including the numbers of learners from other Provinces and other countries. In addition, the Gauteng Department of Education could instantly identify any schools which have spare capacity for placement of learners.

Prior to the development of the Admissions Online Application, parents were required to apply for admission of the children to schools by going from school to school to seek placement. This practice sometimes included parents having to wait in long queues before they could be assisted. It became common practice for parents to queue overnight at the most popular schools that are in high demand on the day before the commencement of the Admissions Period.

When applying for admissions, applicants were required to complete a paper-based application form and submit the required documentation to a school of their choice. The paper-based form of application for admission was not always transparent or fair as schools could select applications on the basis of the learner’s academic or sports record and/or the parents’ ability to afford school fees.

Thus, the acceptance or denial of an application was not always done in compliance with the Admissions Criteria as per the Regulations on Admission to Public Schools, 2012 as amended. The Department, when monitoring Admissions during the admissions period discovered that many schools charged a registration fee which was prohibited in terms of the Regulations on Admission to Public Schools, 2012 as amended. Therefore, children of parents who could not afford to pay a registration fee were automatically excluded, leading to a number of claims of unfair discrimination from parents. It is imperative for the Department to have accurate admissions statistics as the number in order to make accurate resource provisioning for each learner that is admitted to a school.

Accurate admissions statistics enables the department to provide the appropriate amount of educators, school furniture, textbooks, nutrition, scholar transportation, and budgetary allocation. However, prior to the Admissions Online Application, the department relied on statistics provided by schools for record-keeping, reporting and resource planning purposes. The Admissions Online Application system was first piloted in 2014.

This was in response to a request from the Member of the Executive Council (MEC) for Education (who is a Provincial Education Minister) to review and automate the school admission process. Through it, parents are able to apply for admission for children in their care to public ordinary schools online using an internet-enabled computer or from a Smart Cellular Phone.

The online application has obviated the need for parents to visit schools of their choice, and having to queue, in order to fill in paper-based forms. It allowed parents to apply from the comfort of their homes or offices. The Application also allowed for transformation in that schools are not able to exclude applicants without applicants having an avenue for recourse. The innovation has been spread to all the schools in the Province. A qualitative study exploring the effectiveness of centralized registration in Gauteng Schools was conducted to evaluate the success of the system.

The Online Admissions Application System has not only resulted in job creation for young people, but the main drivers of the initiative within the Gauteng Department of Education (GDE) are women. Two Chief Directors, Chief Directorate: School Management and Chief Directorate: Information Technology, selected as Chairpersons of the Admissions ICT meetings are female, the Director: Public Ordinary Schools who is the Project Manager of Admissions is also female.

In addition, the State Information Technology Agency (SITA) partnership with GDE involves a number of female partners. These women have played vital roles in ensuring that the initiative was driven from the conception stage to actualization. The Online Admissions Application System has resulted in job creation, allowing a number of first-time employees with an opportunity to gain experience in the job market and earn a salary to maintain families.

The Department provided two young black men with IT acumen, recruited as interns from a private institution, the opportunity to create the Online Admissions Application System. These two young interns became the main Developers of the Admissions Online Application, resulting in their appointment as Deputy Directors: IT at the Gauteng Department of Education.

They continue to play a major role in the management and constant improvement of the Admissions Online Application. The main stakeholders are parents who apply for admission of their children to Grade 1 and 8. Feedback from parents, School Governing Board Associations, schools, and districts are encouraged through review sessions and queries forwarded to the MEC’s Hotline, Help Desks and telephonically.

The initiative impacted 331 625 learner lives in that this number of learners is successfully placed at schools in the Gauteng Province. Service delivery was significantly improved as more than 85% of the parents made their applications online and visited one school to submit the requisite documents for verification only. The Admissions Placement Open Days opened at 9:00 and closed at 16:00. District Officials, School Principals, administrative staff and interns manned the venues while Head Office played supported schools and districts and monitored attendance.

A total of 1722 Learners were placed during the admissions placement Open Days. The Admissions Online Application generated statistical reports to provide requisite information to ensure adequate resource provisioning in due time. Additional learners were placed in schools, provision was made to accommodate the learners with additional 603 ICT classrooms to be delivered by April 2017.

In line with the Regulations on Admission to Public Schools, 2012 as amended, Non-South African citizens are accepted provisionally and allowed appropriate time to secure documentation. To ensure that all learners of school going age are attending school, the Department has established links with the Department of Social Development and the Department of Home Affairs. Gender equality was promoted through the recruitment and deployment of interns at schools Districts and Head Office. The Majority of interns deployed are women.

When the Online Admission system went live on the 11 April 2016 technical glitches were experienced due to the system experiencing high volumes of applications at the rate of 600 “hits” per second resulting in the system crashing. The process had to be suspended for 48 hours.

The system capacity was improved by increasing the bandwidth, the number of servers and other relevant applications. To ensure that admissions timeframes are not tampered with, the State Information Technology Agency (SITA) outsourced services of a service provider to ensure an infrastructure that could accommodate between 20 000-30 000 applications per minute. The migration was managed by the technical team and the information system industry experts.

A supporting infrastructure, human and financial resources including leadership guidance are critical for the success of such an innovation.

Online Admissions can be replicated in a National Database System that can be used at the national office (Department of Basic Education) to monitor school admissions nationally. The system can be modified to suit the unique context of each Province. Admissions Data will be located in one centralized national database for the Department of Basic Education to use for reporting and planning purposes as a Country. Schools, districts and Provinces will feed into the National Database.

Based on the lessons learned, the Admissions Online application has been improved. The most important lessons learned are outlined below.

•Registration and Application should be completed at the same time

•Landing Page needs to be interactive, to provide necessary information to minimize queries to the Department

•The Admissions Online Application needs to be linked to the database of the Department of Home Affairs for validation of ID Numbers

•Applicants will be alerted to the distance between the address provided and the school.

•Specific categories of schools and access requirements must be specified

•Comprehensive, chronologically generated online Waiting lists of successful and unsuccessful applicants must be signed off electronically by the Principal, Institutional Development and Support Officer (IDSO) and Circuit Manager

•The Application needs to generate live statistical reports accessible to Schools, Districts, Head office in different views.