No student was wrongly placed by CSSPS - GES

Victoria Kissiedu Education Sep - 13 - 2019 , 17:25

The Ghana Education Service (GES) says no student was wrongly placed by the Computerised School Selection Placement System (CSSPS) for Senior High Schools (SHS).

According to the Deputy Director General in charge of Quality and Access, Kwabena Tandoh, students were placed according to their choice of schools.

This follows complaints by some parents that their wards had been placed in SHS that were not part of the five schools they selected.

Speaking on an Accra-based Citi FM Friday, Mr Tandoh explained that students were placed by merit and thus it was impossible for any one to complain that he or she was not placed in schools or programmes of their choice.

"We have ran a system that is very good and for that matter the system has not placed anybody in a school that they have not chosen or a residential preference that they have not chosen, neither has the system placed anybody in a programme that they have not chosen. The algorithm used by the system over every period ensures that.

It is a matter of choice, and because in Ghana secondary school education is a matter of choice, one of the things that happens is that the system only places people in the school they have chosen.

It is one of the reasons why automatically, we could not place 122,706 students and they had to go through the self-placement module," he explained.

Mr Tandoh explained further that the only reason some students were offered their second, third, fourth or firth choice school was because too many people were competing for fewer vacancies.

"For example, Wesley Girls Senior High School which is one of the schools that a lot of people have been complaining about. Vacancy in Wesley Girls for all of the programmes, the entire school had vacancy of 510...[and] there were 4990 students competing for that 510. And I can tell you on authority that there were people who got aggregate six, seven ones who could not get admission," he said.