About 50,000 candidates in the 2026 Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) cannot be placed into senior high schools because they failed English Language or Mathematics.
About 620,000 candidates wrote the 2026 BECE, out of which about 565,000 have already placed and set to be announced on Friday, September 4, 2026.
This was made known in a radio interview monitored by Graphic Online on Joy FM on Wednesday morning by the Coordinator of the Computerised School Selection and Placement System (CSSPS), Sherif Sulemana.
He announced that there has been some changes to the placement process, including the decentralisation of complaints centres and the introduction of digital admission downloads for candidates who secure placement.
Mr Sulemana explained that candidates must pass both English Language and Mathematics to qualify for placement, regardless of their overall aggregate. He said a candidate could obtain a good aggregate but still fail to qualify if the candidate failed either of the two subjects.
Answering a question on why the decentralised complaints centre has not been extended to the district level, the Press Secretary and Spokesperson for the Minister of Education, Hashmin Mohammed, said the Ministry was working within available resources.
“That would have been the ideal situation,” he said, adding that the authorities would consider extending the system to the district level if the regional arrangement proved insufficient.
He said call centre lines would also be provided for candidates in districts located far from their regional resolution centres.
On admissions, Mr Mohammed said candidates would no longer travel to collect their admission letters since the placement comes with the admission letter.
Oversubscription in category A schools
The Coordinator of the CSSPS touched on the issue of oversubscription of category A schools and said, for example, out of the about 2100 available vacancies at both Aburi Girls’ and Achimota, there were over 36,000 applications this year.
This, he said, means about 34,000 candidates who selected the two schools as their preferred choices will have to compete for a limited number of places when CSSPS results are released on Friday, September 4, 2026.
Mr Sulemana said Aburi Girls’ received 8,225 applications for about 800 places, while Achimota received about 28,000 applications for approximately 1,300 places.
He said the pressure on the two schools was even more pronounced among candidates with strong aggregate scores.
At Aburi Girls’, about 3,000 of the 8,225 applicants had aggregates between six and 12, competing for a portion of the 800 available places.
At Achimota, Mr Sulemana said 14,800 applicants had aggregates between six and 12, against about 1,300 declared vacancies.
“Those are the realities within which we operate, and we want the general public to understand,” he said.
Mr Sulemana explained that placement was not determined by aggregate scores alone.
