It's been about six weeks since the Basic Education Certificate Examinations (BECE) results were released, and three weeks since Senior High Schools re-opened, and almost about 300,000 students who passed the examination per the admission requirements of the GES are yet to be placed into various high schools, let alone going to school.

Public Agenda has learnt that in some Senior High schools classes have started, while many of the recent JSS graduates have been either locked in their various homes or moving from school to school or office to office begging to be placed in various secondary schools.

Many were those who breathed a sigh of relief when the Ministry of Education together with the Ghana Education Service decided to replace the previous system of admitting JSS graduates with the Computerized School Selection and Placement System (CSSPS). This was supposed to make it difficult for heads of secondary schools to be corrupted. So laxed was the previous system that heads of some second cycle schools could alter the names of some qualified and deserving students and admit students who did not deserve a place in such schools.

What is worse, some schools abused the policy on the number of student in-take and the spillover effect resulted in a mismatch between teaching materials-teachers, infrastructure, etc-and student population.

Unfortunately, however, after a few years of CSSPS's implementation many parents and their children are rather worse off, as the so-called technology has failed.

Students are told to get scratch cards-which cost around 25, 000 cedis-to access their results online. Interestingly, with all the haste to go hi-tech, the Ministry of Education or the GES cannot even provide enough of the cards by setting up agent stations that will facilitate the acquisition of the cards. The poor Ghanaian parent needs to travel to Accra to the headquarters of WAEC to get a card whose acquisition could be made easier with a simple decentralization process.

Unfortunately, desperate parents who throng the various district and regional offices of Education have to deal with arrogant GES workers. Many of these officials have become agents of private schools who encourage students to consider going to some specific private High schools. The uninformed, uneducated, or sometimes educated but desperate parents have fallen prey to these agents.

Per the admission requirements for entry into a Senior High School, an applicant needs to obtain an aggregate of between six (6) and thirty (30) in four core subjects and two best subjects to gain admission. However, the caveat is that any student who obtains a mathematical score of 6 in a core subject-Mathematics, English, and Science-irrespective of how impeccably s/he did in the other subjects will not be placed. In effect, even if a student obtained an aggregate of 6, 7, 8, or 10, he or she will not be placed because of one core subject. There are several of such students who have not been placed and are knocking on the doors of educational offices every morning. Let's not forget that every student is strong in an area-of course; there are some who make this cut off point. Thus, much as all efforts need to be made to develop various capacities of students, the reality is that students are better in some subject areas than others (subject areas). Therefore, it will be unfortunate to deny a student admission just on the basis of one subject. What is the future of such students?