Senior High School Admission Blues

Every parent in Ghana will love to see his or her child to be admitted into any of the well endowed senior high schools in Ghana right after their completion of the junior high school education. But this does not come easy as the child has to pass his or her Basic Education Certificate Examinations with distinction. The choice of schools also sometimes becomes a headache as most of the parents will like to choose good schools in the urban centers for their children and we all know that not all those who pass well will be able to gain admission into these so called well endowed schools.

Formerly the selection of students into the senior high schools used to be done manually with the headmasters and headmistresses having a field day as they used their discretion in the selection process. Then came the computer placement system which was meant to do away with the corruption in the selection process, but after some years of its implementation, it seems that problem has not been well tackled.

Once again, it is time for the admission of students into the senior high schools and the system is fraught with so many anomalies. Parents are just moving from school to school just to make sure that their children are given admission once they have been selected by the computer placement system for those schools. Some parents have to compromise their principles by paying something extra just to guarantee the admission of their children into some of the senior high schools. We all know that this is the "Cocoa Season" of some of the headmasters and headmistresses. Parents are also being made to pay more than the government approved fees in most of the schools. Moreover, some parents have to feign sickness at their workplaces so as to get the opportunity to go round making sure that their children get their desired schools.

What is the Ministry of Education and the Ghana Education Service doing to correct all these anomalies at this level of Ghana's educational sector? It is time our educational authorities put in place measures to reduce ( if not totally solved) the problems associated with the selection process into the senior high schools. God bless Ghana my Motherland.