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nly four days before the beginning of the new school year on Monday, the online student enrollment center at the Education Agency'€™s office in Kuningan, South Jakarta, continued to receive visits from distressed parents of students who faced problems in attempts to register online.

The parents complained that this year'€™s registration system was not only ridden with problems but was also applied so rigidly that it made it difficult for students to get accepted at preferred state-run schools.

Lantif Tri Wibowo, a civil servant, said that he had registered his six-and-a-half-year-old son at a public elementary school in Semper, North Jakarta. However, the boy ended up losing his seat to an older child.

'€œLater I found out that the other child had not re-registered at the school and the seat was left empty,'€ he told The Jakarta Post on Thursday.

Lantif added that the staff at the online enrollment center did not offer him a satisfying solution. They simply said that based on regulations, the school decided to leave the seat empty.

The enrollment period for public elementary schools was June 16 through July 8, with 111,433 seats available in more than 2,000 schools in the city. Based on the data from the Education Agency, 15,329 seats were left vacant as some students did not re-register after getting accepted.

'€œIt'€™s a shame that there are a lot empty seats, while others did not get accepted. I think I will re-register my son at a public school in the next academic year since I cannot afford to register him in a private school,'€ Lantif said.

Another parent, Hartanto, said that he had visited the enrollment center to ask why the online system rejected his family card, which was required during registration.

'€œFirst they said that it was because my family card was old. However, even after I updated it, the online system still rejected it,'€ he said.

According to Hartanto, the old system, where schools were fully authorized handle admission, was easier to work with compared to the current integrated system.

The student admission system has three phases: public admission, where students vie for seats with other students throughout the country; local admission, where students compete with others in the same province; and third admission, where students who did not get accepted during the first and second admission phases resubmit their applications.

The online registration service has been applied in the capital since 2004, but no such problems occurred with the previous registration system.

Hartanto added that since all three admission-system phases for elementary school were already closed, he hoped that the Education Agency could open an extra admission phase for students who were unable to register due to technical problems.

'€œA parent told me that the agency could open a fourth phase if they found that admissions were hindered by technical problems. I hope he is right,'€ he said.

Hartanto further said further that if difficulties persisted, he would register his son at a private school located near their home. (idb)