The Minister of Basic Education, Sivive Gqawabe, emphasized that no student should face unfair discrimination during the process of entering educational institutions.
Exclusionary criteria continue to be used in the Western Cape schools, such as academic performance results, interviews, tests, and grade sheets, as well as the requirement to provide documents on parental employment and children's birth certificates, which has been deemed unconstitutional.
The Department of Basic Education stated that although the Western Cape Education Department (WCED) does not participate in student selection, it allowed schools to use racial profiling and admission criteria.
Among the department's findings was noted that Western Cape schools are responsible for student placement, and School Governing Bodies (SGBs) play an active role in admissions. This became known after the national department conducted a monitoring and evaluation of WCED as directed by the Basic Education Portfolio Committee.
Despite changes in admission policy, they were not implemented, while WCED received permission to appeal a court ruling from November 2025, which declared the province's admission policy unconstitutional.
Sivive Gqawabe noted that issues concerning school admissions and student placement touch upon the principles of fairness and equitable access to the education system. She warned that when admission systems are perceived as unfair and exclusionary, public trust in the state school system is undermined, and students' rights may be at risk.
According to her, their monitoring studied the implementation of admission policies across different provinces and identified systemic risks requiring corrective measures.
Chief Director for Planning and Implementation Support, James Ndlebe, reported that he found no evidence that provincial department staff interacted with the admission policy to ensure compliance with the Constitution and the South African Schools Act. He noted that this is an issue that needs to be addressed.
According to Ndlebe, schools use academic performance, interviews, tests, and grade sheets to select the best students. Furthermore, they require proof of parental employment and children's birth certificates. Applications also include sections requiring details on participation in sports, leadership roles, musical instrument skills, and photographs.
Ndlebe concluded that all these findings indicate a discriminatory nature of the admission process, as it forces children to compete for places instead of accepting them as they are.
The department also found that some schools reported fewer students in classes, citing physical space limitations and that parents pay higher contributions to maintain a low student-teacher ratio.
Ndlebe clarified that although student admission was done online, WCED was not involved in their placement. He stressed that schools control the process by selecting students according to their own developed criteria, and that they have authority that is usually unchallenged. He added that SGBs actively participated in the student placement issue, not in defining the policy, allowing school management to administer this policy. He stated that if problems arise, there will always be an answer from the SGB, and that admission is not a management issue.
The national department proposed reforming the admission policy to exclude certain selection criteria. It was suggested that all application forms exclude: academic performance, interviews and tests, grade sheets for selecting top students, employment verification, birth certificates, and photographs.
Ndlebe also mentioned that the province cooperated to some extent when the national department provided training for all provinces as part of its intervention. However, he noted that, unlike other provinces, training was provided only to officials, and principals and SGBs had not yet been involved. Permission for subsequent monitoring visits to schools scheduled for May has not been granted.
WCED Deputy CEO Alan Meyer reported that Acting Minister of Education Anton Bredell and Head of Department Brent Walters had not seen the racial profiling report prepared by the national department. Meyer added that although they do not have the full report, they were shown slides.
Nevertheless, the province conducted its own review of ten schools selected from those with the highest number of applications in 2025, and all of them explicitly prohibit unfair discrimination in their admission policy. Meyer stated that the Western Cape admissions policy analysis did not reveal signs of racial profiling or the use of race as an admission criterion.
He insisted that school policies comply with the Constitution, the South African Schools Act, the National Admission Policy, and the Western Cape Education Department's Admission Policy. Meyer emphasized that while the policies are legally compliant, WCED maintains active oversight of their implementation to ensure that admission outcomes do not disadvantage any group of students.
Committee Chairperson Joy Maimela reported that the committee has been dealing with this issue for almost two years, and no solution has been found yet. Maimela expressed concern that SGBs are performing administrative functions of the admission process. She doubted progress, believing that the department and the head of the department are unaware of the situation and do not see anything wrong with it. Maimela stated that they will write to the Speaker of the National Assembly, Thoko Didize, to express their disappointment and request advice on how to compel the provincial department to ensure students' access to basic education without discrimination. They also plan to seek consultation, including visiting 50 schools to study the application process.