Former Director-General of the Ghana Education Service (GES), Dr Charles Aheto-Tsegah, has challenged the classification of the 54,985 candidates who were not placed in public Senior High Schools (SHS) and Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) institutions, arguing that the figure should not be interpreted as a measure of academic failure.
He said the Education Ministry must break down the placement figures to clearly distinguish between candidates who genuinely failed to meet the progression requirements and those whose overall performance may have been strong enough to warrant further education but were affected by specific placement criteria.
“We need to change the way we begin to place our children in terms of looking at their general performance,” Dr Aheto-Tsegah said on Eyewitness News on Monday, September 7, 2026.
His comments come after the Ministry of Education announced that 54,985 candidates were not placed through the initial Computerised School Selection and Placement System (CSSPS) process.
According to the Ministry, 35,382 candidates obtained grade nine in either Mathematics or English Language, while 3,372 candidates did not sit the Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE).
Dr Aheto-Tsegah argued that these categories should not automatically be presented as a single group of candidates who had failed to qualify for further education.
“The person might not get a credit, but would have performed so well that his progression can be considered,” he said.
He said the distinction was important because a candidate’s performance in one subject should not necessarily outweigh their overall academic performance when determining whether they are capable of progressing to the next level of education.
“The current system risks lumping different categories of candidates together, even though their academic circumstances may be significantly different,” he argued.
Dr Aheto-Tsegah called for the placement data to be disentangled to provide a clearer picture of the candidates who were not placed, particularly by identifying those who genuinely failed to meet the minimum progression requirements and those who may still be academically capable of continuing their education.
He acknowledged the importance of the CSSPS in managing the placement process but said greater attention should be paid to the criteria used to assess candidates and how the resulting data are communicated to the public.
“It is difficult to go hard on the CSSPS,” he said.
Rather than focusing solely on whether candidates obtained credits in particular subjects, Dr Aheto-Tsegah said the system should give greater consideration to their overall performance when determining progression.
The debate comes amid renewed scrutiny of the 2026 SHS and TVET placement process, particularly over the number of candidates who were not placed during the initial CSSPS exercise.
The concerns have also reignited questions about whether the existing placement and progression criteria sufficiently capture the academic potential of candidates whose performance may not fit neatly into the current qualification categories.
