The roller coaster of school placement
Over the years, the senior high school placement process has been very challenging, especially for many candidates and their parents.
Understandably, many parents want their children to read particular programmes at particular elite schools within the government’s ‘Category A’ senior high schools.
This is mostly due to the school’s academic or discipline record or as a sentimental attachment by way of the parent being an alumnus of the school or a combination of all three - a perfectly rational thought for any decent parent or guardian in a country where the SHS one attended is such a big deal.
From May 4 to 11 this year, over 600,000 final-year JHS students will write the Basic Education Certificate (BECE), which ultimately determines placement in a senior high school.
In 2016, there were about 461,000 candidates, of whom 308,799 were placed. Last year, of 603,328 candidates, 483,800 qualified and were placed.
It is clear that the clamour for space in our top schools is growing, and with it, an inevitable bottleneck effect, as the schools are not expanding in tandem.
Tweaks and twists
Over the past decade, education authorities have made changes to the selection and placement procedures in an attempt to address the annual distress experienced by parents and candidates.
These have included introducing a compulsory day-student status selection and expanding the number of school choices available to candidates.
This year, on April 1, the Minister for Education announced that this year, BECE candidates will be able to select their schools only after their results are in.
The idea, I suppose, is to enable students to make informed choices about their school selection based on the reality of their results.
To that extent, I agree that logically, a child with Aggregate 25 or 28, for instance, is unlikely to set his sights on applying to my beloved Opoku Ware School to read General Science once his results are in.
Defying logic, reasonable expectations
Logic notwithstanding, I am afraid the government's directive is unlikely to make much difference in resolving the challenges posed by school placement.
Aside from the complexity of the placement process, the reality is that many candidates who apply to be placed in our top-tier schools have very good grades, which would ordinarily qualify them for placement.
However, the limited spaces, the huge subscription and the intense competition mean that many children get squeezed out.
Just to illustrate this point, the 2019 subscription rates for Achimota School, a Category A school, stood at 18,778 candidates, with 1,190 Form One spaces available.
In the Category B space, at the Ghana National College, 35,501 candidates vied for 1,214 spaces, and at the Kumasi Anglican SHS, 29,441 candidates competed for 1,326 spaces. These were under the Double Track system, when spaces were opened up.
In 2020, for example, at the end of the automatic placement, a little over 300 candidates with aggregate scores ranging from six to 12 were placed in schools other than their top three preferred ones.
Normally, a candidate who obtains an aggregate of nine and chooses General Science should gain admission into any Category A school in this country and making such a choice post-results would be entirely appropriate.
However, the bottleneck at our top schools means that such a candidate may miss out on their first and second choices.
Reality check
The reality is that even with quite weak grades for a particular programme at a particular school, many candidates and their parents have an unreasonable expectation that the candidate must secure a place there, no matter what, and they would go to great lengths to do so.
They believe that a particular school will give the child leverage in later life, even if the child does not do well in school.
Presently, all BECE candidates can only choose one Category A school in their list of choices.
Truth be told, for many candidates, only their first choice matters.
Many candidates have told me they only plucked their second or third choice out of the air with disinterest because, in their heart of hearts, those were not choices.
When they lose out on their first choice and get placed in their second or third choice, hell must necessarily break loose and the pandemonium then starts.
This is where influence-peddling, through limited ‘protocol’ arrangements, comes in and reports of money changing hands for placement in particular schools emerge.
I know several parents who moved their children into private senior high schools because they could not secure placement in their dream school and could not accept their child being placed in their second- or third-choice school.
ven without these realities, other practical issues arise.
Many children move around the country for farming purposes or even leave the country on holiday following their BECE and getting them back to their former schools to fill in forms might be a huge challenge.
Many children may ,therefore, miss out.
Whilst this can be done online anywhere, it takes out teachers, who do provide crucial guidance to parents and candidates over school selection, especially as many parents are unlettered.
It also exposes candidates to unscrupulous internet cafe attendants who may simply select schools for them without parental input.
Thinking ahead
For as long as we operate a pyramid system in our senior high school landscape, where only relative few ‘elite’ schools sit at the top and others are consigned to the bottom of the heap, you will have a perfectly predictable outcome of everyone scrambling to join the elites, through fair or foul means, whatever the individual results outcomes or whenever one can apply.
We can, in the short term and setting politics aside, consider the ultimate interest of the child and allow the Double Track system to remain in place for some time to cope with the large numbers that annually seek places, particularly in our high-end schools.
We could allow candidates to choose more than one Category A school or expand spaces in those schools where it is physically possible, in response to the high demand by those with good grades.
Of course, we must consider the law of diminishing returns to avoid compromising academic work and/or discipline.
We could, in the longer term and more equitably, invest heavily in the B and C schools to make them more attractive to prospective candidates.
A very good example was the model school concept under the President Kufuor government.
I do not think post-results applications will make much difference to the wild scramble for places in our senior high schools.
It will actually come with its own other challenges.
We must find a better way to slow down, if not halt altogether, the annual school placement rollercoaster that gives parents such headaches.
The writer is a former Press Secretary to the Minister for Education (2017-2021).
Rodney Nkrumah-Boateng.
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