CSSPS placement

Story: Hadiza Nuhhu-Billa Quansah
An additional 19,500 canadidates have finally been placed into various senior high schools (SHSs) and technical institutions (TI) across the country by the Computerised Schools Selection and Placement System (CSSPS) Secretariat.
The number represents the 30 per cent of candidates who specifically applied for the allocation of schools within the catchment areas of their communities where there are SHSs and TI.
This brings to an end the selection and placement exercise for candidates who wrote this year’s Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE).
On September 25, the CSSPS Secretariat successfully placed 70 per cent of the BECE candidates majority of whom checked their schools via the text code, provided by the Secretariat.
The National Co-ordinator of the CSSPS, Mr Samuel Oppong, who disclosed this to the Junior Graphic in an interview, explained that his outfit decided to hasten the second phase of the placement exercise to enable all the candidates to start school at the same time.
“In the past we do the placement in phases - as and when more vacancies were declared therefore, candidates who were not placed in the first round ended up starting school late. This sometimes makes it difficult for the late starters to grasp what their colleagues had already been taught,” he added.
Mr Oppong said it was rather unfortunate that this year’s placement had delayed a bit. According to him, the raw scores were not sent to the secretariat on time. “Besides, we later noticed that some of the information on 351 candidates during the online registration by their junior high schools (JHS) contained various errors in the shading of programmes, schools, code numbers, and even the sex of the candidates. Therefore, they had to be corrected to avoid the placement of girls in boys schools”.
He said some of the teachers responsible for the online registration at the JHS level entered wrong information, therefore, there were able-bodied students who were placed in special schools like the School for the Deaf and Akropong School for the Blind.
“This placement had to be corrected since the candidates are not special candidates, however, their information online automatically made them special students. Such errors need to be avoided by teachers as the West African Examinations Counicl does not work on such data as a result, it does not make the exercise a smooth one,” he lamented.
Mr Oppong disclosed that all things being equal, the 30 per cent catchment area allocation would be converted to become the seventh choice during the selection of schools by the candidates.
Some parents the Junior Graphic spoke to expressed their delight over the placement of the children in their first choice schools. However, others were dissatisfied over the placement of their children in their second choice schools although they performed well and, in their view, deserved to be in their first choice schools.
However, Junior Graphic chanced upon a situation where three candidates all had nine-ones with the raw scores 413, 432 and 484 respectively. Unfortunately the candidate with the 413 had her first choice school but the one with 484 who selected the same school did not gain admission. This is because the candidate with 413 opted for Visual Arts while the one with 484 wanted a science programme.
The Secretariat was able to place 3,062 of the re-entry candidates. The re-entry candidates are students who could not go to the SHS the previous year due to financial constraints, health problems, transfer of parents from one region to the other and loss of a parent or guardian.
This year’s placement excercise had various challenges. It would be recalled that the Junior Graphic published in the Wednesday, September 7 — 13, 2011 edition that a large number of BECE candidates for this year were not likely to gain admission to their preferred SHS since majority of the schools had drastically reduced their intake for the 2011/2012 academic year. The reduction had become necessary due to pressure on both classroom and dormitory facilities in most schools.
Parents who want to verify where their children have been placed should send the candidate’s index number plus the year of completion (whether 09, 10, 11) to 1060 while those who need to check the raw scores as well as the schools selected by the candidates should do the same but send the text to 1477.
The Computerised Schools Selection and Placement System (CSSPS) Secretariat has finally placed the remaining 30 per cent of candidates into va
This brings to an end the selection and placement exercise for candidates who wrote this year’s Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE).
On September 25, the CSSPS Secretariat successfully placed 70 per cent of the BECE candidates majority of whom checked their schools via the text code, provided by the Secretariat.
The National Co-ordinator of the CSSPS, Mr Samuel Oppong, who disclosed this to theJunior Graphic in an interview, explained that his outfit decided to hasten the second phase of the placement exercise to enable all the candidates to start school at the same time.
“In the past we do the placement in phases - as and when more vacancies were declared therefore, candidates who were not placed in the first round ended up starting school late. This sometimes makes it difficult for the late starters to grasps what their colleagues had already been taught,” he added.
Mr Oppong said it was rather unfortunate that this year’s placement had delayed a bit. According to him, the raw scores were not sent to the secretariat on time. “Besides, we later noticed that most of the information on the candidates entry forms contained various errors in the shading of programmes, schools, code numbers, and even the sex of the candidates. Therefore, they had to be corrected to avoid the placement of girls in boys schools”.
Some parents the Junior Graphic spoke to expressed their delight over the placement of the children in their first choice schoosl. However, others were dissatisfied over the placement of their children in their second choice schools although they performed so well and in their view deserved to be in their first choice schools.
This year’s placement excercise had various challenges. It would be recalled that the Junior Graphic published in the Wednesday, September 7 — 13, 2011 edition that a large number of BECE candidates for this year were not likely to gain admission to their preferred SHS since majority of the schools had drastically reduced their intake for the 2011/2012 academic year. The reduction had become necessary due to pressure on both classroom and dormitory facilities in most schools.