N/R: St. Charles SHS Turns Away Over 100 First Year Students

More more than one-hundred students have been denied admission into St. Charles Senior High School due to lack of accommodation.

The headmaster of the school, Mr. Polycarp Beyale said the school declared a vacancy for 150 first-year students but had 282 students posted there. He said the school does not have the facilities to absorb the remaining 132.

“I made the computerized placement agency aware when I was in the Volta Region that they posted too many students to my school,” he said.

Some parents have, however, accused the authorities of the school of discriminating in the admission process.

“When we first came we were told that it was ‘first come first serve’ but soon we realized that was not what was going on”, Yakubu Seidu, a parent told Joy News.

“There is discrimination in the admission process, I was here early and my child got aggregate 15 and chose this school as his first choice but has still not been admitted, Zakaria Karim,” another parent said.

Adul Wakim Issah, a student placed at the school said he felt “disappointed, people came here with grades that are not better than mine but have been admitted. It will affect my performance if I am not admitted here because it is the school of my choice”, he said.

Kojo Oppong Nkrumah, Deputy Information Minister has, however, discarded claims that the menace which is prevalent in other schools across the country is linked to the New Patriotic Party (NPP) government’s newly introduced free SHS policy.

“The computerized school placement was there before free SHS was introduced so there is no way free SHS is the catalyst for the problem,” he told Kojo Yankson while speaking on the Super Morning Show, Thursday.

The Deputy Minister advised the headmaster and other heads of schools in the same fix to contact the Ghana Education Service, the Secretariat for free SHS programme and the placement agency to have the situation addressed.