Government told to charge GH¢10,000 for Category A school placements
The government has been told to charge GH¢10,000 for Category A school placements. Whaaat, why, for what reasons, and what happened for the Free SHS?
Following the Fourth Estates School Placement for Sale investigative piece, the government of Ghana has been advised to charge parents who want their wards to be placed in category A schools not less than GHS10,000.00 per placement.
This monetization of School Placement suggestion if implemented will only lead to more corruption and legalize the illegal sale of school placements.
Again, it will lead to such schools becoming the preserve of the rich and affluent in society, whose children will not necessarily qualify for placement into such schools using the laid down raw score yardstick.
Furthermore, the suggestion does not pass the basic litmus test and does not match the spirit behind the school placement system.
The computerized school placement system was introduced to curb the human errors associated with student placements in the past, deal with corruption, and help create a system of meritocracy. This way, students are placed in schools based on their academic reports after the BECE.
Candidates are to be placed in schools based on their performance and not based on the ability of their parents to pay GHS10,000 or any other amount.
The suggestion that government should charge GHS10,000 for placement into the top class public SHSs was the brainchild of Lawyer and Historian, Mr. Anokye Frimpong.
He suggested the payment for the placement with the view that the government will be able to raise some revenue from such placements for improving infrastructure in secondary schools.
If that is what it is supposed to be, then there is no need for candidates to even sit for the BECE if their parents can afford to pay GHS10,000 for placement into such schools.
The suggestion from Mr. Anokye Frimpong will surely defeat the purpose and spirit of the Free SHS policy introduced in 2017 by President Akufo Addo which aims at increasing access, equity, and quality of secondary education so that children from less privileged homes can also access education.
The advice should instead be that, such parents who have the money to pay for placement into category A schools should invest such resources into their ward’s education prior to the writing of the BECE so that the academically weak learners from rich homes can sit up, learn and pass the exam.
Once they make the grades, they have a fair and equal chance of being placed in category A schools.
According to him, the payment will prevent parents from paying money to individuals “sitting behind computers” for placement of their wards in category A schools.
But, the suggestion will rather increase corruption and create more middlemen who may buy and resale such placements to others at higher fees. It will rather legalize unfairness, and inequity and defeat the essence of the Free SHS policy which the government has refused to review. One of the key features of the Free SHS is to ensure parents do not pay for secondary education. How then would the same government turn around and ask parents to pay for placement into SHS? This is wrong on all fronts and must be shot down now.
“We don’t need an across-board free Senior High School education. With certain schools, the government should charge fees per term up to about GH¢10,000 and this money going to people in computer rooms would rather go to the government”, he told Kafui Dey on the ‘GTV Breakfast Show.’
If the above is what we want, then, the name of the policy must change to reflect the changing times. The schools will have to also be classified as Free and Paid to distinguish between them. But is that what we want, which will lead to the creation of a class system even at the SHS level?
He made this statement at the back of the investigative piece by the Fourth Estate dubbed “School Placement for Sale.”
In the exposè, parents were seen paying money to some individuals who claimed to be working at the Ministry of Education for the placement of their wards in Category A schools.
Anokye added that the categorization of schools in the country does not augur well for Ghana’s educational system because the parents will always pursue Category A schools for their wards.
Mr. Anokye Frimpong, needs to re-examine the suggestion he is bringing on board. It is a suggestion that is still within the box and will not solve the challenges that demand more innovative outside-the-box ideas to increase the credibility, effectiveness, and efficiency and to help phase out the challenges that confront the CSSPS
Instead, the following are also worth considering.
a. Government should eliminate all forms of protocol placement. It is the first line of corruption in school placement and enlisting into various security services in Ghana and the public sector for that matter.
b. Insiders engaged in and contributing to the School for Sale should be identified publicly and made to face the law, instead of legalizing an illegality by suggesting the monetization of category A school placement.
c. The public must reject every attempt by the government or the Ghana Education Service or the Ministry of Education to put school placement into A choice schools up for sale.
d. If the government thinks it wants to make parents pay some form of education levy to raise money to improve infrastructure, it should instead empower and re-engage PTAs to do so at their own volition.
e. The computerized placement system should be exactly what it is and not have the current human interferences which makes it possible for school placements to be altered anyhow by anyone who has access to the system.
READ: Important Message To All 2022 BECE Graduates Waiting For Their School Placement
It is important that suggestions such as this from Mr. Anokye Frimpong, are shot down at the budding stage before they eat into the thinking of government, policymakers, and stakeholders.
The suggestion that the government should charge GH¢10,000 for Category A school placements is a big no and must be trashed now.
Source: Wisdom Hammond (Lead Author, Ghana Education News)
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