The school selection and placement process for candidates of the 2025 Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) officially begins today, Tuesday, May 27, and will end on Friday, June 6.

Announcing the commencement of the exercise at a news conference on the new guidelines for selection of schools for BECE candidates ahead of this year’s BECE examination, Coordinator of the Free SHS (FSHS) Secretariat, Sena Okity-Duah, revealed that teams from the Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) Service and the Free SHS Secretariat will be deployed across the country to conduct sensitisation activities aimed at guiding candidates, parents, and school authorities on the new selection procedures.

Candidates are required to select seven schools with five being main and two as alternative.

“Candidates are required to select seven schools in total, five main choices and two alternatives and these must be done in order of preference,” she said.

Of the five main schools selected, at least three must be boarding schools while the remaining two should be day schools. Candidates are also permitted to choose Category B schools as either day or boarding, and similarly, Category C schools can be selected as either option.

However, the new guidelines strictly prohibit candidates from selecting more than one Category A school and not more than two from Category B.

While students may choose schools from Category C, they are not allowed to select all five main options from that category.

“Once a candidate is placed in a selected school, that choice cannot be changed,” Madam Okity-Duah emphasized.

The Secretariat also noted that candidates interested in pursuing pure TVET programmes must choose five institutions across Categories A, B, and C with either as boarding or day.

Similarly, students aspiring for careers in fields such as engineering, medicine, or space science are encouraged to select STEM-based schools across all categories.

The FSHS Coordinator further stressed the importance of parental involvement in the exercise, noting that no selection form should be submitted without a parent’s signature.

“The school selection form must be signed by a parent or guardian and submitted to the headmaster of the candidate’s junior high school. Parents must also keep a copy of the completed form for reference,” she advised.