Spare schools selection secretariat the pressure

Tomorrow, September 20, 2013, the placement of qualified Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) candidates into senior high, technical and vocational schools via the Computerised Schools Selection and Placement System (CSSPS) for the 2013/2014 academic year is expected to begin.
According to officials of the Ghana Education Service (GES), the exercise would be completed by October 1, by which time all qualified students would have been placed into available vacancies in secondary institutions.

So far, 250,000 vacancies have been declared by about 95 per cent of second-cycle institutions which are waiting for placement into their various programmes.

We are informed that with the vacancies declared, in addition to those that are yet to be declared by technical and vocational institutions, all qualified BECE candidates will be placed.

The CSSPS was introduced in 2005 by the GES Council as a replacement for the manual system of selection of qualified junior high school graduates into senior high schools (SHSs) because of challenges identified with the manual selection of candidates.

These included the high administrative cost, human error arising from long and two-stage admission processes, loss of cards and perceived corruption associated with the manual selection system.

Since 2011, 30 per cent of the places in SHSs have been reserved as catchment area allocation which allows children living in communities where the schools are sited to have access to them without competing with others from outside.

The process involves the use of candidates’ raw scores in English Language, Mathematics, Integrated Science and Social Studies for prospective SHS students; Basic Design and Technology for prospective technical school students, normally referred to as core subjects, and candidates’ best scores in another subject.

The Daily Graphic notes that although the introduction of the CSSPS brought in its wake some challenges, it can be hailed, as it has at least enabled candidates from lesser known junior high schools who would otherwise not have gained admission to certain ‘big’ schools to be able to pursue courses in those schools.

Also, it has generally brought about a higher level of fairness and transparency.

The period of placement, however, usually brings a lot of anxiety to parents and candidates. Over the years, the CSSPS secretariat has been inundated with requests for change of schools and some parents’ insistence on getting their children placed in their first or second-choice schools.

Some parents also insist that their children be placed in the parents’ former schools, sometimes without considering the children’s performance in the BECE.

With the selection starting tomorrow, we appeal to parents and the public to allow the secretariat to carry out the placement without any interference. We urge parents and guardians to be patient and desist from going to the CSSPS Secretariat or the GES Headquarters to check on the placement, since it will be made public as soon as it is completed.

The selection and placement is more transparent and verifiable now, so there is little reason to stampede the CSSPS Secretariat or the GES Headquarters during this period.

Daily Graphic/Ghana