WITH nearly 3 700 learners unplaced and teacher shortages ahead of the start of the school year, watchdogs have their teeth bared for the Western Cape Education Department (WCED).
The WCED has revealed that 3 698 or three percent of pupils have yet to be placed before schools start next week, after 1 206 070 were enrolled for 2025
With cuts to education budgets announced last year, the department has 34 000 teachers on their payroll after letting 2407 go, and plans to have nine schools and 265 classrooms built this year.
A year ago, the WCED revealed 576 Grade 1 pupils and 2060 Grade 8 pupils were yet to be placed after schools reopened.
Bronagh Hammond, spokesperson for the WCED and Education MEC David Maynier revealed they were yet to reach 100% completion of placement at the 1468 public schools in the province.
But Vanessa le Roux of Parents For Equal Education (PEESA) is unimpressed.
She says: “Every year we have chaos in terms of placement of children and this has been a crisis for years.
“This year we will have an issue of getting children into a class and someone to educate them. I do not think the WCED sees the crisis.”
COSATU Provincial Secretary Malvern de Bruyn adds: “In the last few years, the education department could not even place learners.
They found themselves out of school, out of a class for the whole year and now they dismiss teachers while there is a crisis.
“They must build more classrooms so we can place all learners and we are worried.”