Advise For 2026 BECE: Key Reasons Students Miss Placement and How to Avoid Them

This post is a BECE 2026 exam and School Placement focused post. It is important for parents, teachers, schools and candidates getting ready for the 2026 BECE exam scheduled for 4th to 11th May, 2026.

When the 2025 School placements were released, 107,509 students missed the chance to be placed in any of the five schools they chose. Students who miss automatic placement each year the BECE is written can be partly blamed for the outcome. In some instances, parents, teachers, and schools are also to be blamed.

One of the foremost reasons students miss all five school choices is a lack of understanding of how the CSSPS portal works, how it places candidates, and how to plan for it. There are many schools and parents who are guilty and can be said to be those who caused the problem of their ward’s not being placed. It is also very funny sometimes how some parents react to the non-placement of their wards in first or second-choice schools, especially in instances where others with supposed worse grades are placed in the same schools.

If parents, final year BECE candidates, teachers, and schools will take the advice shared in this post, a lot of students will avoid self-placement and missed opportunities when school placements are released.

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Choosing Schools Based on Mere Taste and Not Academic Reality

The truth of the matter is that wrong choices by parents and schools remain a great problem when it comes to school selection. That is where the problem starts.

We all know that schools such as PRESEC LEGON, Achimota School, Aburi Girls, and all the Category A schools are top schools. Every student wants to be admitted to such schools, just as their teachers, schools, and parents do. However, it comes at a price, and your candidate must prove his or her worth. If your ward wants to be placed in a Category A school, he or she must have already shown signs of being able to make the grades required for such schools from at least the second term of Grade 8.

To stand a chance of being placed in a Category A school, candidates must be scoring between aggregate 6 and 12. If your ward or candidate is not making such grades even in his or her BECE Mock examination, you know his or her chances of being placed in such a school are very weak. Why do you still go ahead to choose it? The School Placement portal will not place your ward with a weak pass in, say, PRESEC ahead of others who made, say, 8 ones with high raw scores in the Core plus two best subjects.

Let me put on record that a ward with a raw score below 450 would often have a weak chance of being placed in a Category A school.

Do not force your children to choose schools you know their academic strength cannot match. Another fact you must keep in mind is that it is never compulsory for any student to choose his or her first choice from Category A.

BIG GAME-CHANGING ADVICE: It is possible to make your first and second choices from Category B instead of Category A. Choosing schools based on mere taste and preference will lead to disaster.

Why Students Miss 1st, 2nd, and Sometimes All School Choices

Each student placed in a school actually won a battle against many others who chose the same school. This means that school placement is not only about grades but also about the programme you chose, the accommodation type, and the grades and raw scores of the students you are competing with.

For example, assuming that Kofi Ansah got aggregate 10, but his accommodation choices for the first three schools are all “Boarding” while the last two schools are “Day.” If the first three schools have space to admit him, but their available accommodations are all “Day” because their boarding slots have been taken by students who obtained grades 8 and 9, Kofi Ansah will not be placed in those schools because one of his preferences (the accommodation type) does not match what is available.

BIG GAME-CHANGING ADVICE: Do noy choose accommodation type anyhow, it will come to hunt you during school placement.

Writing Mock Examinations That Do Not Make You Truly Ready

Preparing for the BECE the right way can have a positive impact on the performance of students in the long run. The source of the mock exams, the reports you get on them, and the support services offered go a long way to improving results and increasing the chances of better school placements.

Some mocks are set by the school, marked by teachers, and no detailed and deep result analysis or reports are provided. This means that the mocks are only about scores and not the secrets, strengths, weaknesses, and actions needed to be taken behind the scores.

For instance, Education-News Consult offers both home and school mocks. These mock examinations are based on their projected topics for each year and come with a detailed examiner’s report which helps candidates and teachers work on weaknesses and improve understanding. Schools and parents who want their wards to become the best students ready for the BECE must take mocks from the consult for maximum student performance.

BIG GAME-CHANGING ADVICE: Your student needs BECE Home Mocks at home and school mocks from Education-News Consult -It is the best mock you can make your ward take. 

To avoid this problem, buy the School Choice Predictor for your home or school and use data and science to make choices for the 2026 BECE and beyond.

BIG GAME-CHANGING ADVICE: Buy the School Choice Predictor for Homes  or Buy the School Version 

Source: Wisdom Hammond, Education-News Consult -0550360658