Category C is the only option left; that is the reality facing parents and students at the Ghana Education Service (GES) Northern Regional Education Office in Tamale this week, as the resolution window for second-cycle school placements opens with a narrowed list of schools.

Students who have issues with their residential status are logging onto the placement portal only to find that Category A and B schools are not available for selection.

"Only Category C schools are there for them to make changes on. Category A and B schools are not available. They don't even appear on it for us to work on them," Anthony Lansa,h the Northern Regional Examinations Coordinator for GES, told JoyNews.

He said what this means is the students have just the category C to select.

"It means that they've exposed them to only Category C schools so far as this resolution is concerned," he added.

Mr Lansah said the resolution process itself is moving smoothly and his team is attending to parents and candidates.

But for some parents, the challenge is more than the categories on offer.

Richard Baba Alhassan, a parent who travelled to the regional office, said his child had selected schools within the Tamale Metro, including Dabokpa and Tamale Senior High School, but was placed at Zugu Dabogni Technical Institute in Kumbungu, which he said was never among their eight choices.

"That one was not part of our request," he said. He said his son scored an aggregate 23.

"My child is supposed to be in Category A school, now they have moved him to Category C," Mr Alhassan added.

He said he came with three copies of the choice list submitted through his child's junior high school to prove the assigned school was not selected, but officials told him the system showed it was his choice.

Another parent, Asmawu Sulemana, said she first went to the regional office on Monday to correct her child's placement but was told to return later.

She returned on Tuesday, wrote her complaint and waited her turn, only to be told her case could not be handled in Tamale.

She was told she would have to go to Accra because the school she chose is not in the Northern Region.

Mrs Sulemana said they told her there is a school with a similar name in the Northern Region; she had chosen the one outside the region; and for that reason, the Northern Region centre could not process her complaint.