Text to confirm SHSs, TIs selected. 2016 BECE candidates told
Candidates who sat for this year’s Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) can from today, Wednesday, July 20 text to confirm the senior high schools and technical institutes they selected.
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The text messages should be sent to the short code 1060 on all networks except Glo.
The National Coordinator of the Computerised School Selection and Placement System (CSSPS), Mr Kwasi Anokye, who made this known to the Junior Graphic, noted that the exercise to give BECE graduates the opportunity to check and confirm the schools they chose would end when their results are released by the West African Examinations Council (WAEC).
“As of today, Friday, July 15, 2016 we have received 98 per cent of the data on the candidates from WAEC. Next Monday, we will do the test run and from Wednesday parents can start texting to check,” he said.
According to Mr Anokye, there are two opportunities for parents to pay for the cost of the SMS they send to check the second cycle schools: they could either pay through mobile money or from their available credits on their phones. The deduction, he said, was between GH¢1 and 90 pesewas.
Mr Anokye said the confirmation of schools was very important because of the claims made by some candidates that they did not choose certain schools they had been placed in, even though it had often been established that they chose those schools.
“Almost every year, we have parents complaining that they did not choose certain schools for their children; however, when we check from WAEC, we realise that over 90 per cent of such claims are false,” he added.
He explained that this usually happened because most parents only knew about the first two schools their children choose and not the other choices made.
“After choosing the first two schools, they leave the teachers to select the rest, and so when they are placed in any of those schools (third and fourth) chosen by the teachers, you find the parents complaining,” he said.
When asked whether or not candidates would be allowed to change schools, he said that would only be done when the parents of the candidates had been transferred from their place of work to another, stressing that beside that, changes would not be entertained in anyway.
Regarding the transfer issue, he said the junior high school of the candidate would have to write to the Ghana Education Service (GES) and the letter must be submitted before the results were released.
A total of 461,013 candidates from 14,267 public and private junior high schools (JHSs) wrote this year’s BECE across the country from June 13 to June 17, 2016.
The number represented an increase of 35,966 over last year’s figure of 392,082. The candidates comprised 239,963 males and 221,050 females.
