The Ministry of Education has announced that the Computerised School Selection and Placement System (CSSPS) results will be released tomorrow, Friday, September 4, after delays caused by thousands of candidates who were unable to upload their data.

Speaking on the Joy FM Super Morning Show on Thursday, September 3, Press Secretary and Spokesperson for the Ministry of Education, Hashmin Mohammed, said the Ministry is now fully prepared to release the placement results.

When asked whether the placement process had been completed and whether the Ministry was ready to publish the results, Mr Mohammed assured that the process has been completed and the results would be released tomorrow.

“We are set to release the placement results tomorrow [Friday],” he said

Mr Mohammed said the initial plan was to release the placements last week, but the Ministry had to extend the deadline after discovering that a large number of candidates had not been able to upload their information onto the CSSPS platform.

He said the Ministry considered it necessary to give the affected candidates additional time because the placement process is based on ensuring that all qualified candidates have an opportunity to secure a place in a second-cycle institution.

“When we thought we could release it as of last week, unfortunately, we had some students who were unable to load their data into the CSSPS system. And then, looking at the number, the number was huge,” he explained.

According to Mr Mohammed, about 20,000 candidates had initially been unable to upload their data when the Ministry extended the deadline.

He said the decision to extend the process was guided by the need to ensure fairness and equity.

“If we are operating on an equity-based system, we needed to offer them the opportunity to extend the date so that they would be able to upload their data into the system for them to be placed into a school,” he said.

He stressed that being qualified for placement comes with an expectation that the candidate will be assigned a school.

“One of the requirements is that once you are qualified, you need to be placed into a school,” he said.

Mr Mohammed said the extension has allowed the vast majority of the affected candidates to complete the process.

“As I am speaking to you now, we've had about 18,000 who have inputted their data into the system,” he disclosed.

He said the remaining approximately 2,000 candidates are students from special needs schools.

According to him, these candidates do not have to go through the same school choice confirmation process as other candidates.

“The remaining 2,000, we know where they are. They are the special needs schools. And special needs schools, they don't need to go through the choice confirmation,” he explained.

He said the placement of such candidates is handled differently because their schools have already been identified.

“Their schools only give us the list, and then we place them manually into the system because their schools are already defined,” he said.