It’s been almost a fortnight since the government introduced eMAP, the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education’s online enrolment system.
Parents and guardians interested in securing a place for Form 1 at any of the boarding schools in Zimbabwe were supposed to submit their applications through this platform and await responses from schools via text. The Ministry even extended the window period for the application submissions.
To date, the system has processed thousands of applicants (the Ministry is yet to share details on successful applicants) and it achieved its primary objective – reducing the burden of crisscrossing the country to secure a place.
However, as expected with any new system, this success has been met with some technical challenges. Some parents, including those based outside the country, are still submitting applications or following up on earlier submissions that didn’t get a successful response.
With less than three weeks left before schools open, this has presented a very frustrating situation for these parents.
In spite of this, the Ministry of Education still hasn’t advised such parents to abandon the system. The Ministry’s stance has been to encourage parents to stick with the system.
The reality, though, is that parents and guardians with such frustrations ought to resort to “old school” offline methods and prospect for places by actually going to their school of choice.
With reports of other schools abandoning the system altogether and some (unverified) feedback on social media from parents who claim to have secured places without the system the best thing at this point is to make other arrangements using the system that has been in place all these years.
