Investigations by the Fourth Estate captured in a documentary titled “School Placement for Sale”, has uncovered widespread fraud in the Computerised School Selection and Placement System (CSSPS).
The Fourth Estate documentary has opened a can of worms and revealed that the CSSPS for the placement of students to Senior High Schools has been corrupted to the extent that it is no longer based on merit, but the payment of enormous sums of money to warrant admission into desired schools.
The CSSPS was introduced in 2005 by the Ministry of Education (MOE) and the Ghana Education Service (GES). It is an automated merit-based school placement system that was meant to replace the manual system of admissions. The CSSPS was established to place junior high graduates into senior high schools (SHS) and meant to increase transparency, fairness and cost-effectiveness in the admission process.
According to research, 375,000 Ghanaian students take the Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) at the end of Junior High School (JHS) Form 3 (ninth grade) in seven subjects. Admission to Senior High School is competitive so only 150,000 students can be admitted into the 500 public and 200 private schools.
The introduction of the CSSPS has, therefore, helped to ensure uniformity and an almost equal distribution of students among the various senior high schools. However, the CSSPS seems to be developing challenges and needs a second look.
A research conducted in 2020 revealed that challenges to the Computerized School Selection and Placement System was the human factor, in terms of refusal of parents and students to accept placement into other schools, apart from their chosen high endowed schools. The parents as such push their way through to bribe officials to get their choice of school for their wards, at the expense of the deprived ones.
The investigation further revealed that some parents paid up to GH¢20,000 to get their children enrolled in top-tier senior high schools and in some cases, people pay as much as GHC10,000 to maintain a slot.
Previously, school placement was administered manually which provided a lot of opportunities for inequalities, corruption and favoritism in the selection. The Ghana Education Service, therefore, introduced the CSSPS in 2005 to eliminate corruption in the placement system. However, individuals and government officials have connived to undermine the CSSPS and The Chronicle can boldly say that we have come back to square one, during the pre-2005 manual selection period.
The advantage of the centralised application system for admission to secondary school based provided opportunities for high-achieving students to attend the best schools in the country, irrespective of their families’ economic background. Such systems may be especially important in reducing inequality in settings with large variation in household income and school quality.
The centralised application system seems to have been run down and the earlier the Ghana Education Service addresses the situation, the better it would be for the youthful population.
The Chronicle applauds the Fourth Estate’s expose and also happy that the GES has already arrested some persons found guilty for investigations to start. The CSSPS obviously needs overhauling.
