CSSPS: Stop demanding schools your wards’ grades can’t secure

The Free Senior High School (SHS) Secretariat has urged parents to accept the schools assigned to their wards through the Computerised School Selection and Placement System (CSSPS), instead of flooding the placement resolution centres with change-of-school requests.

Speaking to Citi News’ Samuel Ackom in Accra on Thursday, September 25, the Deputy National Coordinator of the Secretariat, Dr. Belinda Glover, revealed that the vast majority of challenges they are currently facing are not about students being unplaced, but rather parents demanding a change of school — often to top-tier institutions their children’s grades do not qualify them for.

“The major issue is those who are coming here with the grades that cannot take them to the schools that they want to go to. Remember, it’s a system. It’s an algorithm.

“So the algorithm will be able to interface and then be able to place you where your grade will take you to,” she explained.

Dr Glover expressed frustration over the high volume of parents insisting on changing their wards’ placements, saying it was putting unnecessary pressure on the system.

“But if that is done, and then you come back insisting that we should take you to a different school, it will give us problems. And that is what we are facing here. Largely change of school.

“It’s not about not being placed. It’s not about that I cannot get to school. It’s a change of school. So it means that the person has already been assigned a school, but they just don’t like it,” Dr Glover said.

She stressed that top schools like Achimota and Wesley Girls have limited space and cannot accommodate everyone. Assigning more students than the facilities can handle leads to overcrowding and eventually creates backlash against the government.

“But we all cannot go to the Achimotas and the Wesley Girls. When that happens, you end up sleeping on the floor. And the backlash will come to the government. They should just take the schools that have been assigned to them to make our work very easy,” he said.

He revealed that in about 95% of the cases, students are already placed but want to change their school, even though their grades do not meet the cut-off for the schools they are requesting.

“Every school is a school. Please go to those schools that you have been assigned to so that we can ease the pressure here. Imagine somebody is here with aggregate 36 to go to Achimota. How do we explain this? Please. Please. Talk to the parents for us,” she appealed.

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