General News of Tuesday, 17 September 2019
Source: www.ghanaweb.com
2019-09-17
The Black Star Square was almost occupied with frustrated parents and students
The Ghana Education Service has assured that all qualified candidates of this year’s BECE will get admission for their secondary education as the number of vacancies in the country’s Senior High schools exceeds the total number of candidates who sat for the exam.
Deputy Director General, Dr K.B. Tandoh, speaking to Bernard Avle on ‘The Point of View’ said, WAEC submitted complete results for 512,083 candidates which is less than the available vacancies in Senior High Schools.
“If all 512,000 had qualified, all of them will have spaces,” he said, adding that 38,355 candidates have however been disqualified, leaving more room for the 473,728 who have qualified.
Dr. Tandoh stated that, based on the criteria the system uses for the placement, 351,022 were ‘auto-placed’ in one of their chosen schools leaving 122,706 to be put on the self-placement system.
“Once we run the placement, 473,728 are ranked in order of merit, then we begin to look at their choices (their choice of school, their choice of programme, and their choice of residency) and then we start the placement.”
Dr. Tandoh also explained that the new system, unlike the previous one, gives an opportunity to B.E.C.E graduates who have been displaced to go through the self-placement process where they can choose for themselves preferred schools from the list of available schools where there are vacancies.
“This new system, what we do is that, the students that are not able to be placed at their schools based on their choices, you open up the rest of the vacancies for them because the vacancies are available anyway and you put them into a system called the self-placement where the same place that they checked their admissions, they can click a self-placement button and go through the process.
The placement system has been fraught with challenges like every other year, this year however, it appears a lot more students are stranded and searching for admission options.
The Black Stars square has been besieged by thousands of students and their parents seeking to resolve complaints that they were given schools they did not choose.
Others have complained about being given schools that were far from home.
