The Ministry of Education has advised parents and guardians not to pay money to anyone who promises to secure a senior high school (SHS) placement for their children or wards under the Computerised School Selection and Placement System (CSSPS).

“Placement is free. Do not pay money to anyone who claims he/she can help you with placement. Anyone who demands money in exchange for placement is a fraudster and should be reported to the police immediately,” the Deputy Minister of Education, Dr Clement Apaak, said.

CSSPS goes live

Speaking in an interview ahead of the placement, which officially begins today, Dr Apaak said the exercise would be live today, and urged parents and guardians to have confidence and trust in the system to deliver.

“Our students who completed Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE), whose results are out, will be placed through the CSSPS on Wednesday.

“We expect that the students will be placed according to the way the system has been programmed to place them,” he added.

Dr Apaak gave an assurance that, based on the challenges of previous years, the current team had worked hard to ensure that “we do not encounter some of those challenges”.

He said this year, the CSSPS team was determined to ensure that the system worked smoothly without human intervention.

Scramble for Grade ‘A’ schools

The deputy minister said there were limited spaces in Grade ‘A’ schools where there had always been a scramble for places, and advised parents that wherever their children were placed, as long as it was not a female being placed in a male school or vice-versa, they should accept the placements.

“We have decided to allow the system to function and work, and we will not seek to interfere by manually manipulating the system. We want to eliminate the biased, sometimes financially induced manipulation of the system,” Dr Apaak said.

He added that the success of students did not depend on the schools they attended, insisting that “it will depend on the commitment of the student to academic work, discipline, the support of the parents, and, of course, the efforts of the school”.

“Success is not predicated on attending a Grade ‘A’ school,” Dr Apaak stressed.

He acknowledged that there was a disparity in terms of facilities and amenities, but he stressed that “that alone cannot spell doom for a student”.

Resolution Centre

The deputy minister said the CSSPS team had set up a resolution centre at the GNAT Hall in Accra to address genuine challenges, especially where a boy was placed in an all-girls school, or a girl in an all-boys school.

Dr Apaak added that the centre would also resolve situations where a student, for instance, selected a technical institute or secondary technical institute but was placed in an all-girls school.

He said on the directive of the Minister of Education, Haruna Iddrisu, the resolution centre would have adequate security arrangements to assist both staff and members of the public during the resolution process.

“We expect to run a 24-hour resolution centre so that issues will be addressed as quickly as possible,” he explained, adding that by the time the students would be reporting to school in a month’s time, all outstanding issues would have been resolved.