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undreds of parents thronged the Jakarta Education Agency'€™s office in Kuningan, South Jakarta, to report problems with the online school registration system on Friday.

During their visit to the agency'€™s office, the parents expressed their dissatisfaction with the online system, which according to them was disorganized and made it difficult for them to register their children for enrollment in public schools.

Riki Setyanto, one of the parents, said that he had registered his daughter for enrollment at state vocational high school SMKN 47 Jakarta but she then got rejected due to the minimum height policy applied by the state-run school.

However, he added, his daughter was also turned down after she registered at a different school because her name was still listed for SMKN 47 Jakarta.

'€œFirst my daughter was rejected because of her height, and now due to technical issues, she can'€™t register at any school. I just want to get her into a good school,'€ he said, adding that he hoped the agency could solve the problems as soon as possible.

Nuraisyah Paransa, another parent, also said that she was unable to register her son at any state-run high school due to similar technical problems.

She said that her son was initially accepted at a public East Jakarta school through the public admission phase. However, he did not re-register with that school as he wanted to shoot for a better state-run school through the local admission phase.

'€œBut the second school rejected him because it said that he had been accepted through the public admission phase. Since my son did not re-register at the first school, now he isn'€™t registered anywhere,'€ she said.

The online registration system has been applied in the capital since 2004. No such problems occurred with the previous registration system.

This year'€™s 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 first and second admission resubmit their applications.

Lasro Marbun, head of the Jakarta Education Agency, said that anyone who did not re-register in the public admission phase and was unable to register during local admission or third admission, could register their children at private schools.

'€œThey can then transfer them to a public school in the second semester,'€ he said on Thursday as quoted by kompas.com.

However, Rida Afrida, who wanted to register her son at state junior high school SMP 194, did not agree with that idea. According to her, a lot of people have chosen public schools over private schools for financial reasons.

'€œI cannot pay for a private school, if he thinks that is a good alternative for us, he should just give us the money to pay for those schools,'€ she said.

Meanwhile, acting Jakarta governor Basuki '€œAhok'€ Tjahaja Purnama said that the parents should be patient and not panic.

'€œWe had no problems last year. The process might be a little complicated but there'€™s no reason to panic,'€ Ahok told reporters at City Hall. (idb/dwa)