ELS: MBN360 EDUCATION
Public Relations Officer of the Ghana Education Service (GES), Daniel Fenyi, has dismissed suggestions of systemic failure in this year’s school placement exercise, explaining that the majority of concerns raised at resolution centres stemmed from individual subjective preferences rather than actual flaws within the Computerised School Selection and Placement System (CSSPS).
Speaking on the placement exercise, Fenyi walked through the timeline of events, explaining that results were released around 10:30pm roughly two weeks prior, triggering a wave of activity as students checked their placements, with some proceeding directly to their assigned schools while others raised concerns through official channels.
According to Fenyi, students who did not obtain a grade nine in English Language or Mathematics, or both, qualified for automatic placement, with 527,000-plus students successfully placed through this mechanism.
He noted that this figure represents 87.3 percent of the total students due for placement, describing it as the highest automatic placement rate recorded in the country’s history.
“If you check where we have come from, this is supposed to be the highest number of automatic placements we have had in our history,”Daniel Fenyi
Margin Of Error Explained
Addressing the remaining 13 percent, roughly 50,000 students, who did not receive automatic placement, Fenyi explained that these candidates were given the opportunity to undergo self-placement, with more than half of them completing this process successfully.
He argued that a system achieving 92 to 95 percent placement efficiency, with a corresponding 5 percent margin of error, should be regarded as excellent performance for a country of Ghana’s scale.
“If you are undertaking any exercise and you achieve 95 percent efficiency with a 5 percent margin of error, that is excellence for Ghana,”Daniel Fenyi
Individual Preferences, Not Systemic Problems
Fenyi was emphatic that when the concerns raised at resolution centres were properly dissected, the majority did not reflect systemic problems within the placement system, but rather individual subjective preferences and choices made by students and parents.
He explained that students are typically asked to select eight schools from across roughly 1,000 second-cycle institutions nationwide, submitting these choices with the understanding that they are comfortable being placed in any of the eight.
According to Fenyi, difficulties arise when students, despite formally selecting all eight schools, privately hope only for their first, second or third choice, leading to dissatisfaction when placed in their fourth, fifth or eighth preference.
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“These are not static, these are human beings, so the 5 percent are genuine Ghanaian children who want access to senior high education,”Daniel Fenyi
Demand Concentration on Category A Schools
Fenyi identified the core structural challenge as an overwhelming concentration of demand on Category A schools.
He explained that prior to placement, head teachers nationwide were asked to declare available vacancies, resulting in a combined total of well over 800,000 spaces, sufficient to accommodate all BECE candidates with roughly 200,000 spaces to spare.
However, he noted that Ghana’s approximately 94 to 95 Category A schools offer a combined total of only around 76,000 vacancies, against more than 300,000 students who applied specifically to that category.
“No calculation, no mathematics in this world can fix 300,000 people into a 76,000 space,”Daniel Fenyi
Addressing specific complaints of students being placed in schools they never selected, Fenyi stated that such genuine cases brought to GES’s attention numbered no more than 20, all of which had been addressed.
He noted that some individuals who publicly claimed grievances on television and radio failed to follow up when invited to present their cases for verification, raising doubts about the authenticity of certain viral complaints.
School Reopening and Resolution Timeline
Fenyi confirmed that all first-year students nationwide are expected to report to school on Friday, September 18, expressing confidence that outstanding concerns at resolution centres would be resolved by that date.
He noted that a significant number of issues raised had already been addressed, while some visitors to resolution centres discovered they had simply been placed in one of their originally selected schools, rather than facing any actual placement error.
Looking ahead, Fenyi suggested that addressing the underlying demand imbalance would require deliberate efforts to make Category B and Category C schools more attractive to students and parents, rather than relying solely on appeals for acceptance of alternative placements.
He noted that students had been required to select two Category A schools, three Category B schools and three Category C schools during the application process, arguing that this structure already signals a willingness to accept placement across categories, provided the alternative options are made sufficiently appealing.
