The annual hustle parents of first-year Senior High School (SHS) students have to endure to get their children fully enrolled in school is back again this time around.

A JoyNews visit to Accra Girls SHS and the Achimota SHS saw some parents enduring lengthy hours in queues to complete the admission processes of their wards.

Sharing their plight with the news team, the parents bemoaned the processes and hoped it was a bit faster.

A parent said in a bid to complete the admission process on time, he left home at dawn. He explained that when he got to the school, each parent was given a ticket to regulate the process, but later he noticed that some parents kept cutting the queue. This was the reason he was still unattended to as of 11 am.

“The arrangement is the problem that we are facing here. People who woke up around 5:00 am are still here. As of now, they have not even received their forms, but those that are coming recently are those taking the forms.

“When we met the security people at the gate, they gave us a number and said ‘this is how you are going to go ....’ However, when we came and sat here it is not going in that way,” he lamented.

Another parent said the process had been very slow, adding that since morning the only thing they had done was to take a passport-sized picture.

“I was here at 7:00 am, when we came, we were asked to go and take passport pictures- we did it and then they attached it to the forms. We are waiting to be called,” she said.

Despite parents’ requests for the December 4 re-opening date to be postponed, the Education Ministry insisted that the students must report to school.

Following the insistence of the Ministry, the Education Minister Dr Yaw Osei Adutwum was called before parliament to reconsider the reopening of schools for first-year SHS students.

Responding to the concerns on the floor of Parliament on Monday, December 4, Dr Adutwum said his outfit was merely trying to revert the education system to the old calendar before Covid struck.

“When these timelines are strictly followed, the contact hours will be duly achieved and our quest to get back to the pre-Covid academic calendar will be on track.

“Last year school opened in February for first-year students. This year we are opening in December which gives us the opportunity to then open in October or September and therefore go back to the pre-Covid calendar as we all are envisaging,”  he said.