2019 BECE results: 490,000 Qualify for SHS

Out of the 514,215 candidates who sat for the Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) this year, 490,000 have qualified to be placed in senior high schools (SHSs) and technical institutes (TIs) under the Computerised Schools Selection and Placement System (CSSPS).

The GES, which operates the system, is, however, waiting for the results of 3,116 candidates to be released for those who qualify to be included in the placement.

The Director-General of the GES, Professor Kwasi Opoku-Amankwa, who announced this at Aburi in the Eastern Region yesterday, added that a portal would be activated in the evening of Sunday, September 8, 2019 for candidates, parents and the public to check where qualified candidates had been placed.

He said prospective candidates could purchase the voucher from vendors or use their mobile phones to check the placement online at www.cssps.gov.gh or www.cssps.org.

The online checks would require the index numbers of candidates and a voucher code.

He said the GH¢5 scratch card could be purchased from any rural bank in the country, all offices of the Ghana Post, Swift Africa Logistics Ltd, as well as Modello & Gem Ltd.

Prof. Opoku-Amankwa said if a student was not automatically placed, that student should access the self-placement platform.

He said a call centre, with the number 0307007777, had been set up to resolve issues arising from the placement.

He announced that the call centre would be opened from Monday, September 9, 2019 for candidates or parents who might have challenges with the placement for redress.

Perspective

The number of BECE candidates who qualified for placement increased from 177,000 in 2005 to 439,000 in 2015. 
In 2017, the CSSPS placed 424,092 students, with the number increasing to 472,000 in September 2018.

Reopening

On the school calendar, Prof. Opoku-Amankwa announced that schools would reopen for the Green Track first and second year, as well as single track students, on September 15, 2019.

Their counterparts in the Gold Track would begin the first semester of the 2019/2020 academic year on November 12, 2019, he said.

Full cohort

He expressed happiness that this year marked the time the full cohort of schools, made up of free SHS students, would be in session.

"The implication of every student in SHS enjoying the free SHS programme of the government should be obvious to all stakeholders. The management of the GES is conscious of the implications of this development in the administration and management of the schools under this circumstances.

"What it means is that it will require additional commitment and dedication from all stakeholders, managers, administrators, teachers, non-teaching staff, students and parents/guardians,” he stressed.

“It is the expectation of the management of the GES that all the stakeholders will work together and cooperate effectively to ensure the successful management of the system,” he added.

Answering questions on the absence of textbooks, Prof. Opoku-Amankwa said the situation would not affect effective teaching and learning because all the 152,000 teachers in public schools had been supplied copies of the Teacher Resource Pack.

He said the pack was detailed enough to guide teachers and none of them should use the absence of textbooks as an excuse, adding that there had never been a time when a curriculum revision had come with the relevant textbooks.

Prof. Opoku-Amankwa further announced that all basic schools would be reopened on Tuesday, September 10, 2019 for the beginning of the academic year.
He added that ‘My first day at school’ would be celebrated in all public basic schools to welcome children entering the school system for the first time to the school environment.

He said staff of the GES at the headquarters and regional/metro, municipal and district education officials would visit various schools across the country to interact with the new entrants and their parents.

Background

The CSSPS became operational in September 2005, two years after the GES Council had taken the decision in 2003 to implement it.

It sought to improve the manual system of selection and placement of qualified BECE candidates into public and private SHSs, TIs and vocational schools by replacing the manual system with a computerised one.

Prior to the introduction of the CSSPS, the placement of BECE candidates in SHSs was done manually.

It was a rather laborious task involving heads of SHSs gathering at regional conferences to go through the results of individual candidates, as presented by WAEC and their basic schools, and hand-picking student performance cards and communicating the feedback to parents, usually through school notice boards.

To find out if a candidate had been placed, the candidate or his parents had to personally visit the school of his or her first, second or third choice to find the candidate’s name on the notice board.

Experts observed that the manual system had some weaknesses, including school heads taking too long a time to select students by performance, the difficulty of school heads giving equal attention to all candidates at the same time, rising cases of favouritism on the grounds of ‘old boyism, old girlism’, among others, rather than on performance or merit.

The computerised system

The CSSPS has established a procedure for candidates to follow in selecting their schools. WAEC marks the scripts of candidates and grades them by subjects, after which candidates’ results are offloaded to the CSSPS.

The CSSPS then reviews all results, using its inherent procedures for quality assurance.

The process of quality checks of the CSSPS includes ensuring that students are identified by their index numbers and gender. It also ensures that schools match the categories or options selected by candidates for placement.

The CSSPS uses the raw scores of candidates for the selection process. Generally, for any BECE candidate to qualify for placement, the candidate will have to satisfy the total raw score of not less than 200.