‘Investigate school placement system’

The Ghana National Association of Private Schools (GNAPS) has called on President John Mahama to order investigations into the abuse of the Computerised School, Selection and Placement System (CSSPS).

The association alleged that the admission placement processes were plagued with serious malpractices and, therefore, parents were losing confidence in the CSSPS.

“There is  clear evidence that the placement exercise has all these years been done haphazardly by officers who are not committed to their responsibilities,”  GNAPS alleged further.

At a press briefing in Accra yesterday, the President of GNAPS, Mr Godwin Sowah, who spoke on behalf of the association, accused personnel in charge of the admission placement processes of abusing the trust and confidence reposed in them by the public, adding that their conduct confirmed allegations that the CSSPS centre was plagued with serious malpractices.

The event also marked the launch of the GNAPS Week celebration for 2014, which has the theme: “Quality for quantity education—which way, Ghana?”.

Wholesale admission

Mr Sowah also alleged that since the inception of the CSSPS, the GES had been promoting what it called ‘the wholesale admission’ of BECE candidates into public senior high, technical and vocational schools.

According to him, currently, many children in basic schools could neither read nor write, yet they would be made to write the BECE, indicating that some would be placed in second-cycle institutions. 

‘It is either our mechanisms that need serious reforms or the human factor is woefully incompetent or we need a retraining of personnel at all levels,” Mr Sowah added. 

Leave education to professionals 

Mr Sowah called on the public to rise against the manipulation of the educational system by politicians.

“Constituencies and communities should turn their backs on the use of educational promises as a bait to catch votes”,  he advised.

He also said frequent policy changes and non-commitment in following laid-down rules and regulations, among other factors, ‘had contributed to this poor state of affairs.’