Vacancies for all BECE candidates this year
The National Coordinator of the Computerised School Selection Placement System (CSSPS), Mr Kwasi Anokye, has given an assurance that all Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) candidates who sat and passed the examination will be placed for the 2016/17 academic year.
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Mr Anokye, who declared this in an interview, said the number of vacancies declared by the senior high schools (SHS) far exceeded the number of candidates who sat for the examination.
Vacancies declared by the SHSs were 516,867 as against 461, 009 candidates from 14,267 junior high schools (JHSs) who sat for the examination.
Day Community SHSs
He, therefore, assured parents that there was no need for panic, and explained that the number of vacancies exceeded the number of candidates because of the 41 community day SHSs which would be ready for admissions in the first week of October when the freshers would be expected to report to school.
Mr Anokye said the community day SHSs alone had 20,500 vacancies, “And by calculation, it means that should all the candidates who sat for the examination pass, they will all get places in SHSs.”
Asked how sure the secretariat was that the 41 day SHSs would be ready by the first week of October, he said the secretariat had firm confirmation from the Ministry of Education that they would be ready for admissions.
Confirmation of choice of schools
He has, therefore, advised parents to confirm the schools their children selected by texting the 10-digit index number to the short code 1060 to be sure that the schools their children selected were what the computer captured.
Mr Anokye explained that the CSSPS would only consider changing the schools a candidate selected because of transfer of the parents of the candidate and because of health reasons, “and this should be done before the release of the BECE results. We will, however, not entertain such complaints after the results have been released.”
Delay because of withheld results
Explaining why the secretariat delays in the placement after the release of the results, Mr Anokye said the delay was always because of withheld results of some of the candidates.
“We always have to wait for those withheld to be released before we begin placement. This is to ensure that we are fair to innocent candidates whose results were also withheld,” he explained.
He cited an instance where a candidate had nine ones but missed out on his first choice of Achimota School because his result was among those withheld.
Prior to release of results
Mr Anokye said prior to the release of the results, the CSSPS always received two types of data from the West African Examinations Council (WAEC) and named them as the biodata and choice data to ensure that candidates did the right thing.
He said, for instance, that there were times when a male candidate selected only girls’ schools and vice versa or where a student selected a special school meant for candidates with physical challenges.
“So, what we do is gender validation and programme validation from July to August,” he explained, and added that previously, there were candidates who selected schools which did not offer the programmes they intended to pursue and that was what the programme validation exercise sought to address.
Protocol
Mr Anokye said the Minister of Education, Professor Naana Jane Opoku-Agyemang, had openly declared that there would be no protocol for admissions this year and, therefore, appealed to parents to adhere to the directive.
He, however, explained that the only “protocol” that might work would be the 30 per cent quota for candidates from the catchment areas, citing, for instance, that a candidate from a JHS at Madina or Legon had a better chance of gaining admission to PRESEC Legon than a candidate from a different region even with a better grade.