Faizel Patel, Radio Islam News, 2014-04-15

Registrations for the 2015 academic year has opened and once again sought after schools by parents for their children have come under the spotlight.

The Gauteng Department of Education (GDE) believes that all children, no matter what their background, have the right to quality basic education in the public sector.

In Lenasia the queue for admissions at Park Primary snaked around the school.

Parents braced the cold rainy weather since Sunday, camped with blankets, chairs and food supplies at the school from as early as 4:30pm and even slept overnight to ensure they were ahead when admissions were accepted on Tuesday at 8am.

The issue of queuing at Park Primary is seen as a compliment as parents want their children in this school as it has maintained a quorum of success as opposed to the many other school in Lenasia.

However Many have also called the queuing for days in advance for registration of their children impractical and say there should be a more viable solution than sleeping over at the school for day at a time.

“Forms can be given in from the 15th of April until the 30th May, but parents are lining up in order to ensure they get the space, hence they are coming on the first day,” said Shaukat Kahn the principal of Park Primary.

Khan said because the school is so sought after, they cant please everybody all the time and parents who want to enroll their children at Park Primary must ensure that they make the necessary sacrifices to maintain their place in the queue.

“If you want to come to the school try and make an arrangement…we are not hard and fast in saying that the parent that’s applying must be there,” said Khan.

“We are having regular roll calls every three hours to ensure that there is a representative for that particular number. This has come about because of the accusations that were leveled last year around the duplication of numbers,” added Khan.

“It so important for us as a school to be on our toes and to ensure that the problems we experienced in the past, although it was not our problem, we make sure we remediate and we try and find a best way to deal with the situation,” khan said.

Until a solution is found the problem of parents ensuring they get their children into sought after school will persist with long queues as in the past.

(Twitter: @Faizie143)