The Gauteng Department of Education (GDE), in collaboration with SITA and Vodacom Business, is confident that its online application portal will ensure a simpler and smoother process ahead of the 2019 learner intake for Gauteng public schools.
In previous years, parents experienced delays and downtime when using the system, but the department believes it is ready to handle the high traffic volumes when the process opens for Grade 1 and Grade 8 admissions on Monday next week.

The three-year collaborative effort will continue to see Vodacom providing assistance with cloud hosting services that include eight to 10 virtual machines (VMs) in addition to dedicated firewalls that come with management backup storage services for the digital online application platform system.

In 2016, the department introduced the portal to help enable parents to apply online for the 2017 academic year. Previously, it was not unusual to see parents physically queuing at schools as much as 24 hours ahead of the start of a manual first-come, first-served process.

To assist with the cost challenges associated with access to the online application platform, Vodacom will open all 16 of its ICT community centres across the Gauteng Province to provide parents with free Internet access to process applications.

Mickey Mashale, chief sales officer for Vodacom’s Enterprise Business Unit, comments: “The Vodacom Cloud service will continue to make the department’s system more robust by decreasing dependency on manual input, reducing risk and helping make the department more efficient and agile.”