GES Council calls on parents not to interfere in SHS selection

The Ghana Education Service (GES) Council on Friday urged those putting undue pressures on Heads of Senior High Schools, especially the well-endowed schools to refrain from undue interference with admissions into Senior High Schools (SHS).

“Council is taking necessary measures with the appropriate authorities to ensure that the problems are removed or at least reduced to reasonably, tolerable levels“, it said in a statement signed in Accra by Agyewodin Professor Adu Gyamfi Ampem, Achrensuahene and Chairman of Council.

It said the selection of pupils into the public SHS had gone through series of changes.

Until the introduction of the current Computerised School Selection Placement System (CSSPS) in 2005, pupils were selected through the regional conferences of Heads of Senior High School based on the Common Entrance Examinations results.

The selection was characterised with numerous problems such as parents commuting from one school to another. Heads of SHSs were accused of taking bribes, politicians and big men and women putting pressure on Heads of schools to admit their wards as well as inequity in the admission processes thus denying pupils from rural schools admissions into the well-endowed schools such as Mfantsipim, Prempeh and Achimota.

In view of this, the CSSPS was introduced in 2005 and intended to eliminate the problems associated with the previous methods of selecting students into public schools.

The system is operated by computer and is merit-based from the Basic Education Certificate Examinations (BECE) Results.

For almost six years of operation of the CSSPS, problems identified include some parents not getting their children into the schools they preferred; boys or girls being sent to schools, which do not admit pupils of their sex, big men and women silently circumventing the process by unorthodox means in getting their pupils into schools they like.

The statement said Council was very concerned about the public anxiety of selection of students into SHS, and was determined to ensure that problems associated and connected with the implementation of the CSSPS were entirely eliminated or drastically minimized.

To eliminate or reduce the problems to the barest minimum, Council had had meetings with the National Co-ordinator of CSSPS as well as Conference of Heads of Assisted Secondary Schools (CHASS) and had been sufficiently
briefed on the problems currently facing the implementation of CSSPS.

Source: GNA