BECE graduates will choose schools after BECE results in 2025 – John Mahama

BECE graduates will choose schools after BECE results in 2025. This is the latest promise by the former President of Ghana John Dramani Mahama.

Following the School Placement for Sale investigative piece and the numerous administrative challenges that have affected the Computerized School Placement System, the former President of Ghana, who is vying for the Presidential Candidature of the NDC, John Dramani Mahama has outlined plans to clean up the school placement system of corruption, inefficiency, illegal monetization of placement when voted into power on the 2024 General elections.

According to him, his government will ensure that

A. BECE graduates do not select schools until their results have been released

B. Each student’s grade or raw score will be known to parents before the candidate can select from a set of schools he or she qualifies for.
C. Schools will have raw scores or grades that one can have to merit placement into such schools.

He added that the move will weed out all forms of illegal human interference and abuse of the school placement system.

The school placement system has lost its credibility to a large extent, and the recent revelations by the Fourth Estate investigative piece confirmed the rot that goes on during school placement.

READ: 5 Videos that will help you pass 2023 BECE and WASSCE

John Dramani Mahama made this public during his visit to the Volta Region as part of efforts to see for the votes of delegates of the NDC in the upcoming Presidential Candidate or flag bearer and parliamentary candidate elections slated for 23rd May 2023.

In a related development, Africa Education Watch, an education think-tank has been calling on the government to change the current approach to school placement and rather make students choose schools after their results are released, but this has not been given any attention by the government. Education also called for schools to be ranked and their placement cut-off points made known to the public. It further called for the cut-off points-raw-scores for each school to be made part of the school selection software and system to help avoid the challenges that confront the current system.

In recent times, the School Placement System has been hit by investigations that revealed parents who paid money for their ward’s schools to be changed to category A and B schools have been traced to the office of the Education Minister.

The challenges that have bedeviled the computerized placement system are worrying, given that the CSSPS was actually introduced to cure such problems.

Today, placement has been reduced to unfairness, monetization, and favouritism led by School Placement cartels and syndicates.

In a related development, the Minister of Education, Hon. Adutwum has disclosed over 500,000 BECE graduates have been placed in secondary, technical, and vocational second-cycle institutions for the 2023 academic year.

During his first term in office as president of the republic of Ghana, Mahama introduced the community day schools and completed 46 such schools while many others were at different levels of completion. Some 124 Community Day Senior High schools were awarded by his government.