Most of the boarding schools in the country have been inundated by applications for Form 1 places according to the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education. There are concerns that most of the pupils who applied for places at boarding schools may fail to get places.
The Permanent Secretay in the Ministry of Education, Tumisang Thabela, said that parents who have applied for boarding places should plan for second options as it is not possible for the schools to accept all the applicants.
Speaking at the National Association of Schools Inspectors and Directors (Nasid) on Wednesday, Thabela had this to say
There are some schools with applications as high as 3 920 yet they have 120 available places.
As district teams, you are part of recruitment so let’s avoid rent-seeking behaviour in that area.
I don’t have actual figures and names of schools here but we do have a number of schools that are overwhelmed. So what will happen is that parents and their children have to accept that they might not be able to get their first choice schools because of competition.
However, there are some that have not attracted anyone as of now.
From the applications, it’s clear that we had more applicants than available boarding places so some parents will have to make peace with the fact that not all of us can get boarding school places.
