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17.12.2008 General News

CSSPS Not Serving Its Purpose

17.12.2008 LISTEN
By Daily Graphic

The Computerised Schools Selection and Placement System (CSSPS) has so far not served the purpose for which it was introduced, the National President of the Association of Private Schools, Mr Godwin Sowah, has said.

He said, for instance, that the directive by the GES to unplaced candidates to contact heads of schools in their communities for admission so that the service could regularise their admissions defeated the purpose for which the system was introduced.

Expressing his opinion on the CSSPS in an interview in Accra, Mr Sowah described the directive as a recipe for corruption.

“This directive is a recipe for corruption. It is fraudulent because that is not how the computerised placement was planned to work. That instruction from the GES has caused over enrolment in many schools,” he said.

Mr Sowah said by that directive the CSSPS was rather promoting the creation of a class society in the country.

“This is because children from upper and middle class families, as well as those from endowed basic schools and communities, will dominate the old and well established SHS,” he contended.

Mr Sowah, who is the Proprietor of Havard Schools in Accra, said what parents wanted from the CSSPS was for all candidates who qualified for SHS to go to school the same day.

He said the situation currently was that candidates who were placed in the second, third or mopping up exercise period normally arrived in school well after the mid-term of the first term and observed that most of the affected candidates were academically poor and were from socially poor backgrounds.

Such students, Mr Sowah said, obviously would have problems catching up with the rest of the class, and pointed out that, that would seriously affect their grades at the end of their study.

He said the computerised system was introduced to correct all anomalies associated with the manual selection system but, “unfortunately, the situation is rather worse for candidates and their parents and will affect the quality of education”. Story by Severious Kale Dery

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