Some senior secondary schools in rural areas still have vacancies - GES

Accra, Nov. 16, GNA - Mrs Margaret Andan, Director, Secondary Education Division of the Ghana Education Service (GES), said on Wednesday that a lot of vacancies still existed in some senior secondary schools in the rural areas.

The GES has, therefore, allowed heads of those schools to assist qualified candidates, who would seek admission at their schools. This is because there are some candidates in the rural areas, who were not able to reach the computerised placement centre in Accra where all placements of candidates were carried out.

However, Mrs Adan said, the Heads were still to pass through the centre with names of any of such students.

The Director, who was speaking to the press in Accra, said about 150,000 candidates had been placed in senior secondary schools for the 2005/2006 academic year as against about 130,000 last year. She said about 4,000 candidates who deferred their courses last academic year had been placed this academic year.

Mrs Andan said the authorities would have to go round the schools to monitor the admission process in order to came out with the actual number of candidates, who had reported and were in school. She said according to GES policy, the admission process normally ended in September but because of the problems involved in this year's placement, admission would continue till the end of December. On discipline in schools, Mrs Andan said a new type of indiscipline had cropped up prompting the GES to ask Board of Governors and Parent-Teacher Associations to make inputs for a new code that would address such acts of indiscipline in second cycle schools. She said the office of the Human Resource Development of GES had been asked to increase the quota for guidance and counselling because some schools had no counsellors.