The Ghana Education Service (GES) has requested the Police to investigate allegations that some of its top officials and staff of the Education Ministry are extorting money from parents to place their children in certain senior high schools.

Dr. Deputy Director-General of GES in charge of Quality and Access, Dr. Kwabena Bempah Tandoh said his outfit received reports about extortion of money from parents, hence the need to investigate.

Dr. Kwabena Bempah Tandoh disclosed this on Joy FM's Super Morning Show on Wednesday. He noted that the GES has written to the Ghana Police Service in this regard.

“I can tell you on authority that my Director-General actually wrote to the Ghana Police Service, to IGP he also wrote officially to NIB for an independent investigation into some of these claims. I would also encourage the general public. Free SHS means free, I know that because of desperation and the fact that people are set on certain schools, sometimes they let their desperations allow them to be duped,” he said.

The deployment of the Computerized School Selection and Placement System (CSSPS) this year, has been fraught with some challenges which have compelled the GES to set up centres to resolve them.

Meanwhile, GES says it has placed about 505,000 Junior High School (JHS) leavers in various second cycle institutions since the computerised school placement and self-placement exercises began.

This figure represents approximately 88.6% of the about 570,000 students who are expected to be placed this year, after their successful completion of the Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE).

In an interview with JoyNews on Tuesday, the Director-General of GES, Prof. Opoku Amankwah said the process has run smoothly so far.

“So far, it’s been good. Overall, there were about 570,000 students that were to be placed and as we speak now, about 505,000 of them have been placed. But those who have enrolled are about half of that number because the enrolment has actually started with the school reopening.

“We don’t expect that we wouldn’t have issues; we expect that we’d continue to have issues and it is just because we don’t have enough space in each school that people subscribed,” he stated.