Let's Find Solution to the Computerised Placement Conundrum

Over the past week, the education front has seen some level of unease with the placement of Junior High School graduates in their choice of Senior High Schools (SHS).

This has led to the 'conversion' of the Black Star Square into the office annex of the Free Senior High School Secretariat over the period.

In pursuit of answers to the predicament they find themselves in, thousands of parents with their children, yesterday, like it has been over the period, besieged the square hoping to have their wards placed in any SHS at this point.

Whilst 473,728 candidates qualified to be placed in their choice of school this year, a whopping 122,706 of them were not placed in any of the SHSs, Technical or Vocational schools and have to resort to self-placement, a reason for the congestion at the square.

Apart from this unfortunate development which has been an annual occurrence, some of the pupils have been placed as day students in schools far away from their parents with others offered schools and programmes they have not chosen.

This means that if parents and guardians are unable to find a solution to this dilemma, either by securing a place in the boarding house or a school managed hostel facility for their wards, the teenagers would be tasked with the responsibility of catering for themselves.

Whilst this is ongoing, the academic calendar has begun in earnest making those who have been placed and duly reported to school examination-ready than their colleagues who are still struggling to have a place.

The confusion in the placement of students in SHSs which accompanied the introduction of the Computerised School Selection and Placement System (CSSPS), introduced in 2005, has however, been exacerbated by the introduction of the free SHS policy which continues to give many more Ghanaian children the opportunity to have secondary education.

As a result, parents have been eased of the financial burden associated with SHS education and would not let go the opportunity granted them by the Ghana government.

It is in this regard that the Ghanaian Times impresses upon the Ghana Education Service (GES), in collaboration with the CSSPS, to do all it could to fill the 520, 298 admission vacancies it declared earlier in the year.

The Ghanaian Times also calls for a relook at the computerised school placement system with the view to improve upon it more than a decade of its introduction to spare parents, teachers and students the annual anguish of non-placement.

It is heart-rending seeing parents and guardians queue in the scotching sun to have their challenges resolved. We hope that Dr Kwabena Tandoh, a Deputy Director General in-charge of Quality and Access at the GES, and his team will resolve this.

We, however, wish to remind the expectant students that success is created by students themselves and not by virtue of the school they attend.

As students, you must contribute your quota to your progress by giving your all during your SHS education journey irrespective of the schools you might be placed in.

The Ghanaian Times wishes our young students the best of studies and life in the years ahead.

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