Imperfections in the Computerised School Selection and Placement System (CSSPS), can be resolved with IT enhancements, an Education Consultant has suggested.

Dr Prince Armah believes for instance that to make the CSSPS platform more user-friendly, a mobile version can be rolled out to complement the current desktop platform.

He was speaking Monday evening on current affairs programme, PM Express during a discussion on challenges some Junior High School graduates their parents face in assessing information about their Senior High School postings.

The system has not always been fraught with challenges.

Related: CSSPS: successes, challenges and the way forward

Parents and candidates sometimes complain that the postings fail to take cognisance of their preferences and peculiar situations

A parent told Joy News that although the family lives in the Volta Region, his teenage son was posted to a day school in Ashaiman, in the Greater Accra Region, but with no relative in Accra, his child cannot attend the school.

Also, there have been challenges with system freezes as many candidates say they had to wait hours, sometimes days, to access the system.

Speaking on PM Express, Dr Armah said the situation can get so bad to the extent that “some parents are willing to pay to for the posting.”

The CSSPS is a computer programme designed for placing candidates in SHSs.

It was introduced in 2005 after two years of piloting to replace the manual system. The overall objective of this computerised system has been to fully automate school placement process in order to reduce human errors and to promote efficiency and fairness in the selection and placement of students in SHSs in the country.

The CSSPS has established a procedure for candidates to follow in selecting their schools.

The West African Examination Council (WAEC) marks the scripts of candidates and grades them by subjects after which candidates’ results are offloaded to the CSSPS.

The CSSPS then reviews all results of pupils using its inherent procedures for quality assurance.

The process of quality checks of CSSPS includes ensuring that pupils are identified by their index numbers and gender, and to ensure that schools match with the categories or options selected by pupils for placement.

The CSSPS uses raw scores of candidates for the selection process. Generally, for any BECE candidate to qualify for placement, the candidate will have to satisfy the total raw score of not less than 200.

Speaking on PM Express, Dr Armah who is a Consultant with the Institute of Education Studies, said “I think it is a challenge, we could do better. We could go for mobile apps, we could enhance the system. We must apply the right technology...very advanced system and because of mobile phone integration, it is probably easy for people to connect more...”

Watch the full programme in the video below.