WHILE thousands of children headed back to school for their first day, that was not the case for one learner from Portland in Mitchells Plain who was supposed to start Grade 8.<\/p>\n
Upset mother Melissa Smith said that the education system failed her as her son did not get placed at one of the three schools close to his home. Instead, he got placed far from home in a \u201cdangerous area\u201d.<\/p>\n
Melissa said that she applied to Spine Road High and Mondale High School, with her top choice being Rocklands High School as her twin sons are already there.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But the school was \u2018oversubscribed\u2019, instead her son got placement at Glendale High School.<\/p>\n
The single mother explained: \u201cI applied online as we are supposed to and then got a response that the schools are oversubscribed.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI submitted an appeal and drafted a letter of motivation because his brothers are there, they can protect him.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI got an SMS in December to say that my son has been placed at Glendale High School. I have nothing against the school but the area where the school is is known as \u2018the Hell\u2019 because the area is dangerous. Rocklands is a five-minute walk from home.<\/p>\n
Melissa said she met with the principal of Rocklands High and went to the Metro South Education District three times, but there is nothing they can do.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He added: \u201cMy son is at home, in his room, he does not want to come out. I can see that he is broken. He refused to cut his hair on Tuesday with his brothers and said, \u2018why must I cut my hair, I don\u2019t have a school to go to.\u201d<\/p>\n
Spokesperson for the Western Cape Education Department Bronagh Hammond responded by saying: \u201cThe learner has been accepted at Glendale HS.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThe choice to have him at home is the parents\u2019 choice. An offer of placement was made which is 2km from his parents listed address. This is 900m more than the school of choice they want him to attend. This is not unreasonable.\u201d<\/p>\n
The mom responded, claiming that: \u201cThere are children that were accepted at Rocklands that don\u2019t even reside in the catchment area.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WHILE thousands of children headed back to school for their first day, that was not the case for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":23602,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[14494,14492,14499,14491,14490,14498,3128,14500,14496,14501,14493,4150,14495,2238,1516,131,14497,4832],"class_list":{"0":"post-23601","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-south-africa","8":"tag-glendale-high-school","9":"tag-grade-8","10":"tag-hell","11":"tag-learner","12":"tag-melissa-smith","13":"tag-metro-south-education-district","14":"tag-mitchells-plain","15":"tag-mondale","16":"tag-mondale-high-school","17":"tag-mondale-hs","18":"tag-portland","19":"tag-rocklands","20":"tag-rocklands-high-school","21":"tag-school","22":"tag-son","23":"tag-south-africa","24":"tag-spine-road-high","25":"tag-western-cape-education-department"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23601","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23601"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23601\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23602"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23601"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23601"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23601"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}