Deputy Education Minister, Dr Clement Apaak, has explained that the difficulty some candidates are facing in securing automatic placement into senior high schools is largely due to a mismatch between where vacancies exist and the schools candidates most want to attend.

Speaking at a press briefing on Monday, September 7, Dr Apaak said the 2026 placement figures showed that a large proportion of candidates had selected the highly subscribed Category A schools as their first choice, despite the relatively limited number of vacancies available in those institutions.

He said 313,283 candidates selected Category A schools as their first choice, compared with 176,614 candidates who chose Category B schools, 123,577 who selected Category C schools, and 995 who selected participating private SHSs/SHTSs.

According to the Deputy Minister, the figures show that more than half of the first-choice demand was concentrated in Category A schools.

This high demand, he said, needs to be considered alongside the number of vacancies available across the different categories of schools.

Dr Apaak said the placement system had 859,828 declared vacancies across participating schools.

Of this number, 76,417 vacancies were in Category A schools, 250,366 were in Category B schools, and 468,652 were in Category C schools.

The figures show a significant difference between the number of candidates seeking places in Category A schools and the number of vacancies available in those schools.

Dr Apaak described the comparison as instructive.

“While 313,283 candidates expressed a first preference for Category A schools, the declared vacancies in those schools stood at 76,417,” he said.

The figures mean that there were more than four times as many first-choice candidates for Category A schools as there were declared vacancies in those schools.

The Deputy Minister said the figures were important in understanding why some candidates may not have received automatic placement even though the overall secondary education system had a substantial number of vacancies.

He said the issue should not simply be viewed as a shortage of places.

“The issue, therefore, is not simply the availability of spaces in our secondary education system,” Dr Apaak said.

“It is largely a mismatch between where vacancies exist and where candidates most strongly prefer to be placed.”

While Category A schools had 76,417 declared vacancies, they received first-choice selections from 313,283 candidates.

By contrast, Category B and Category C schools together accounted for more than 719,000 declared vacancies, while receiving a considerably lower combined number of first-choice selections.

This imbalance means that having vacancies elsewhere in the system does not automatically translate into a place at a candidate's preferred school.

Dr Apaak said candidates and parents needed to distinguish between qualifying for secondary education and securing a place at a particular school or programme.

“This explains why a candidate may qualify for secondary education but not necessarily secure their preferred school or programme,” he said.