Guardians from various locations spent the night at Canisianum Roman Catholic High School in the Omusati Region to avoid the long line for Grade 8 admission application forms.

Every parent wants to send their children to the best school, and this year's call for admission at Canisianum, which is one of the few best-performing schools in the region, attracted a large crowd of parents.

This comes after the school announced the issuance of close to 500 application forms to parents seeking grade 8 admission for their children for the 2026 academic year on a first-come, first-served basis.

Henriette Ainima is the principal of the Canisianum Roman Catholic High School.

"The crowd that you have seen there are parents and guardians of the children seeking grade 8 admission for the 2026 academic year. People have slept here; people have started queuing up as early as 08h00 in the morning, and we are always giving out limited application forms. It depends sometimes on the number of people. In most cases over the past few years, we have distributed up to 500 application forms, and I believe we may reach that number today; however, we will not be able to serve everyone in the crowd."

Quizzed about the alleged favouritism in the application registration process, Ainima said, "Wherever there are people, people have to talk; there should always be negativity in the minds of the people. You are here; where is the favouritism here? I understand people have recorded their names for people to know who came first, and then the police are there trying to put order in the queue, and people are just coming freely without chaos."

Appolonia Hango was among the early arrivals and managed to obtain an application form.

"We came here around 23h00 when we heard that people are registering their names for the purpose of collecting admission forms for admission to grade 8. We slept here; some people slept in the cars, and some on the chairs. It was not easy because it was very cold, and you were not even comfortable, especially when some of the people slept on the chairs. It was not easy at all."