SHS Freshers to report on October 13

All first-year senior high school/technical students are to report to school on October 13, 2014, the Ag Director-General of the Ghana Education Service, Mr Charles Aheto-Tsegah, has announced.

This follows the successful placement of 272,330 Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) candidates into senior high schools (SHSs) and technical institutions (TIs)under the Computerised School Selection Placement System (CSSPS).

Speaking at a press conference yesterday, Mr Aheto-Tsegah said that 149,890 eligible candidates were yet to be placed and was hopeful that by October 23, 2014, all heads of SHSs and TIs would have declared vacancies to allow for the second placement exercise.

He said qualified BECE candidates who were unable to gain admission to or deferred their admission to SHSs/TIs within the immediate past three years were included in the placement exercise.

“This year we want all candidates to start senior high school classes early.  We are, therefore, using this medium to advise all heads of senior high schools to reopen on schedule and declare their admission status promptly. This will help us place all unplaced candidates early enough to avoid loss of student and teacher contact hours,” Mr Aheto-Tsegah said.

So-call big schools

On selection of schools, he said, a lot of candidates claimed that schools into which they were placed were not chosen by them, therefore, he directed candidates to verify their school choices by texting their index number plus 14 to short code 1060 on all networks before confronting officials of the CSSPS Secretariat.

Mr Aheto-Tsegah said it had been observed that many candidates chose so-called big schools, resulting in a very stiff competition for placing candidates into such schools, to the extent that  even though candidates generally qualified with very good aggregates they did not gain admission; to the disappointment  of their parents and guardians, “who call our offices with the claim that their children having had six ones could still not gain admission into schools like Wesley Girls, Holy Child, Adisadel, Prempeh College, Accra Academy and Achimota, to mention but a few.”