Danger looms as 4,200 BECE candidates risk missing 2016 SHS placements
Four thousand two hundred 2016 Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) candidates risk not being placed into senior high schools (SHSs) and technical institutes (TIs).
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This is due to the failure of their junior high schools (JHSs) to submit their data to the West African Examinations Council (WAEC) for onward transmission to the Computerised Schools Selection and Placement System (CSSPS) Secretariat for the 2016 SHS placement exercise.
The candidates are from 155 JHSs across the country. Out of the 10 regions in the country, only the Upper West Region has submitted the full data on all its candidates.
The data comprises the names of candidates, index numbers and senior high schools (SHSs) or technical institutes (TIs) they have chosen.
The National Coordinator of the CSSPS, Mr Kwasi Anokye, who made this known to the Junior Graphic, gave a breakdown of regions yet to provide data on their candidates as Northern Region, 53; Volta Region, 29; Central Region, 27; Western Region, 23; Greater Accra Region, 15; Ashanti Region, four ; Brong Ahafo Region, two, while the Eastern and Upper East regions have one school each.
The CSSPS Secretariat, therefore, warned that if the schools refuse to submit the data by the end of this month and WAEC releases the BECE results, it will be compelled to go ahead with the 2016 placement without the data of those candidates the secretariat doesn’t have.
“You know we work in unison with WAEC and there are some schools which are yet to submit their full data to the council for us to pick them and work with them,” Mr Anokye said.
He said the secretariat had received a list of the schools which had not yet submitted data on their candidates and had forwarded it to the regional directors of education who would in turn submit them to the district directors of education for onward delivery to the affected JHSs to act fast in making the data available to the secretariat.
“This is very serious,I can tell you,” he said and added that “this week we would go to some of such schools in the Greater Accra Region to pick the data on the candidates since it affects the placement exercise. If we are not able to go to all the schools, no one should blame us”.
Last year, he said, at the time WAEC released the BECE results, there were some schools that had not submitted the data of the candidates to the council.
“Despite this, we went ahead to do the placement and by the time the data got to WAEC, the candidates involved could not get their first choice schools even though they performed excellently,” Mr Anokye said.
The national coordinator, therefore, charged all JHSs that were yet to submit the data on their candidates to do so before it was too late.
According to him, when it happens like that, it is the CSSPS that is blamed.