Unprecedented Number Of BECE Candidates Qualify For Placement

Flashback: BECE candidates busily writing a paper

Three hundred and seventy-five thousand, two hundred and fifty-eight candidates who wrote this year's Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) qualified for placement into senior high schools (SHSs) and technical institutes (TIs), the Ghana Education Service (GES) has said.

The figure represents 99.6 per cent of the 376,859 candidates who wrote the BECE.

This means that 1,601 candidates did not qualify to be placed in SHS and TIs this year.

Although the GES could not tell the criteria used in the selection of the candidates, it is believed that the lowering of the admission grade from aggregate six to 30 to from six to 40 may have contributed to the high placement figures this year.

Last year, 176,128 candidates, representing 46.93 per cent of the 375,280 candidates, qualified for selection and placement into SHSs and TIs.

At a news conference in Accra Thursday, to release the 2012 placement of candidates, the Director-General of the GES, Ms Benedicta Naana Biney, said 245,143 candidates, representing 65 per cent of the total who qualified, had so far been placed.

She said the remaining 130,115 (34.6 per cent) candidates would be placed when the heads of schools submitted a list of vacancies in their schools in two weeks’ time.

With the release of the placements, candidates are to text their names, index numbers and the last two digits of this year to the short code 1060 on any mobile network except Tigo to know the schools they have been placed in.

Ms Biney said each successful candidate was required to print out his/her placement form from the Internet using a GES scratch card purchased at GH¢4 from any branch of the Agricultural Development Bank (ADB), the ARB Apex Bank and its network of rural banks, SIC-Financial Services Limited, Fidelity Bank and Ghana Post.

The printout form from the Internet, she said, would be presented to the SHS or TI the candidate had been placed in for admission.

“Candidates who are unable to use the scratch card for various reasons, especially those who have no access to the Internet, should contact the nearest regional or district education offices for the hard copies of the placement results,” she advised.

Ms Biney said first-year students were to report to school on October 15, 2012.

She said the GES expected all regional directors of education, regional Computerised Schools Selection and Placement System (CSSPS) co-ordinators, district/municipal/metro directors and heads of second-cycle schools to facilitate the placement process.

She said the service expected the full co-operation of the public in this year’s placement, adding, “We implore parents and candidates to accept the placement made, since it is based on their own choice of schools and programmes upon merit.”

Ms Biney asked parents to show interest in the registration of BECE candidates in order to make inputs in their children’s choice of schools, with the advice of teachers.

“Such an important exercise should not be left solely with the teachers or pupils. There are many complaints from parents that they do not know how particular schools were chosen by their children.

“It is when parents are confronted with the truth that, after all the choices were made by the children themselves, that they begin to beg for transfer of their children to other schools,” she said.

Ms Biney indicated that parents could seek advice from seasoned educationists where they could not contact heads of schools. -graphic.com.gh