Deadline for SHS placement extended to September 30, 2017
The deadline for the online placement of the Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) candidates into the senior high schools under the Computerised School Selection Placement (CSSPS) has been extended to the end of September, the Ministry of Education has said.
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A statement signed by the sector minister, Dr Matthew Opoku Prempeh, assured parents and guardians that “no child who qualified to be placed in a public senior high school will be left out.”
The latest directive will bring a huge relief to frustrated parents who were struggling to beat the earlier deadline of midnight of Friday, September 8 for placement of their children.
There was hustle and bustle at the Ghana Education Service (GES) headquarters in Accra yesterday as frustrated parents made last-minute efforts to get placements for their children in the schools.
Hours to the earlier deadline, the challenges with placements had not been fully addressed.
When the Daily Graphic visited the GES head office, it was observed that many parents who looked frustrated and worried were moving in and out of offices to seek solutions to the challenges with their the placement of their children.
A few parents had been able to have their challenges addressed.
Some were directed to the placement centre at Cantonments, the West African Examination Council (WAEC) and the Ministry of Education to have their issues resolved.
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Pouring out their frustrations, some parents said they were still finding it difficult to get placement for their children due to lack of access to the online platforms or did not find any schools with vacancies.
Most of the complaints centred on candidates who had not been placed, who had requested change of placement because they mistakenly self-placed themselves in schools or who wanted to change the schools where they were
originally placed.
Other difficulties had to do with the parents’ inability to access the website given by the ministry for candidates to do self-placement or print their admission letters.
Others said the results of a subject or two of their children had been withheld by WAEC with the excuse of investigating alleged examination malpractices.
Assurance
Last Wednesday, the Ministry of Education gave an assurance that it would do everything possible to ensure that no BECE candidate who had been placed or given the opportunity to select a school would be left behind under the CSSPS.
It admitted that there were challenges facing qualified BECE candidates who had not yet been placed in any school.
“What we are saying is that we will give you the opportunity so that at the end of the two days if your child is not enrolled, we are not going to cut him or her off,” the Deputy Minister of Education in charge of Secondary, Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET), Dr Yaw Osei Adutwum, told journalists at a press conference in Accra.
A statement issued by the acting Director-General of the GES, Prof. Kwasi Opoku-Amankwa, on September 1, this year, said 267,327 out of the 424,092 candidates who qualified for SHS had secured placement in the schools of their choice, while 150,770 candidates could not be placed in the schools of their choice.
Under the arrangement, the educational authorities gave those who could not be placed in the schools of their choice a second chance to go online and select from the options available within 48 hours from last Friday.
It said candidates could check their status from 8 a.m. on September 1, 2017 by logging onto www.myjhsresult.net and then follow the online instructions.
In view of the challenges encountered in the process, the GES extended the grace period to allow the candidates to do self-placement and print their admission letters.
Statistics so far
Out of the 427,000 students who qualified to be placed under the CSSPS, he said, 310,000 had so far printed out their admission letters from the portal and were ready for registration in the schools where they had been placed.
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He said out of the 150,770 candidates who were directed to do self-placement, 110,000, representing 70 per cent, had been successful at the time and expressed the hope that by the end of the deadline all the candidates would have done the self-placement and printed their admission letters.
Interviews
Speaking to the Daily Graphic, a couple of parents said they were told that nothing could be done about their situation because they had done self-placement.
Those the Daily Graphic spoke to included Madam Elizabeth Mensah, Mr Charles Opoku and Mrs Stella Oppong.
Another parent, Ms Delight Badu, who shared similar frustration, said when her niece, who had lived and schooled in the Northern Region, went to the Internet Café to check which schools were available with the self-placement system, the café attendant chose a school for her in the Eastern Region without her consent but all efforts to correct it had proven futile.
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