Time to make CSSPS work

The seemingly chaotic situation that was seen last Monday at the Solution Centre at the Black Star Square in Accra, during this year’s Computerised School Selection Placement System (CSSPS) exercise seems to have died down, even though there may still be some pockets of challenges with it.

On Thursday, September 19, the centres were officially closed down, though the call centres, with the number 030-7007777, are still active to address those pockets of challenges.

Indeed, we need to move on even though things might not have been what we wanted them to be. That is the spirit that should carry us in our quest to improve upon our educational sector.

Surely, some parents and students may have been hurt beyond measure and we at the Daily Graphic ask them to accept the apology by the Minister of Education, Dr Matthew Opoku

Prempeh.

But going forward, we want to ask the managers of education, what steps they are taking to forestall the reoccurrence of such an unfortunate incident in subsequent years.

On Wednesday, Dr Prempeh hinted that the government was to construct dormitories for the E-Block Community day senior high schools (SHS) across the country to attract more students.

To the Daily Graphic, this is welcome news for which no effort must be spared to ensure the timely construction of the dormitories.

The early completion of the dormitories will go a long way to reduce the pressure on the few Grade A schools with all the requisite facilities of a secondary school.

The idea of the E-Block schools is a fantastic one, but the fact that they are day schools and in some cases, are located a distance away from the communities, can sometimes be a disincentive because students shy away from choosing such schools.

We must also revisit the policy of developing some SHSs in each region as model schools, with all the modern facilities required in a standard SHS, as a way of decongesting these highly sought-after schools.

Additionally, there is that urgent need for the government to fast-track the improvement of facilities in less-endowed senior high schools across the country so that they can attract Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) candidates and teachers.

The Daily Graphic believes that this is not negotiable if we are to free ourselves from this annual ritual of massing up at the solution centres and the Ministry of Education to request a change of placement from one school perceived to be ‘inferior’ to a ‘superior’ one.

We must all, as a nation together, say no and never again to that Monday when hundreds of parents and students massed up in search of better schools and for assistance to correct mistakes in the course of the placement exercise.

It is, however, important to state that this is a wake-up call for all parents to show interest in the selection of schools by their children when the school selection time is up. We think that parents must also take the strength and weaknesses of students in certain subjects into consideration, before selecting the schools.

It is our hope that this year’s challenges will be the last so that next year, no parent will go about accusing the system of placing his or child in a school, which they chose during the school selection exercise.

The CSSPS, no doubt is a better option, compared with the manual system. But to achieve the target envisaged under the system, the challenges mentioned above need to be tackled urgently.

It is high time all stakeholders took up their responsibility to make the CSSPS work.