GES Finally announces release date for SHS School placement.

The Ghana Education Service (GES) has disclosed that the school placement for first year students of senior high schools will come out on Sunday, February 21.

According to the Director-General of the Ghana Education Service (GES), Professor Kwasi Opoku-Amankwa, the placement will cover candidates, both school and private, who wrote the Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) in 2020, as well as other re-entrants.

Speaking to the Daily Graphic, Prof. Opoku-Amankwa said the GES had worked closely with the West African Examinations Council (WAEC) to release the results of the majority of the candidates whose results had been withheld, adding that there were currently less than 100 candidates whose results had still been withheld.

Prof. Opoku-Amankwa said over the years, the number of candidates who qualified to be placed was always far below the vacancies available, “and every year when we do our placement, just as we get oversubscribed schools, we also get under-subscribed schools”.

He also explained that based on an analysis of issues by the service, “the major issue that creates a problem for us is the self-placement”.

“In the past, when you did the self-placement, chose a school and for any reason you wanted to change it, the system did not allow you to do so. You needed to come back to us, and that was why we got people massing up at the Black Star Square to do those changes,” Prof. Opoku-Amankwa explained.

This year, however, he added, the candidates would be allowed some level of flexibility to effect changes on their own.

“For this year, candidates will be allowed to change schools a couple times until finally they enrol in them. So until you enrol in a school, you can continue to do changes up till the enrolment deadline, and once you have the opportunity to change, you do not need to come over here to seek any assistance or for someone to do that for you,” he added.

In all, about 525,000 qualified BECE candidates will be seeking placement into 721 senior high, technical and vocational schools of their choices which have declared about 535,000 vacancies.