Matthew Opoku Prempeh
GOVERNMENT HAS extended the period for the registration of junior high school (JHS) graduates into senior high schools (SHSs) to the end of September 2017.
The extension of the deadline to complete the Computerized School Selection Placement System (CSSPS) process was granted after a series of consultations and meetings.
According to a statement signed by the Minister of Education, Dr. Mathew Opoku Prempeh, “The deadline for accessing the internet to complete the computerized school selection placement (CSSPS) process, has been extended to the end of September 2017. The website is www.cssps.gov.gh. The ministry assures parents and guardians that no child who qualified to be placed in a public senior high school will be left behind,”
Prior to the extension to the end of September, parents had up to midnight of Friday, September 8, 2017, to register their wards online.
Clarifying the reason for the deadline extension, chairman of the Ghana Education Service (GES) Council, Michael Kenneth Nsowah, said the Service still has a backlog of over 30,000 students, out of the 400,000 qualified candidates, to place.
He said, “The online registration is being done with a purpose because we have a target to post over 400, 000 candidates who have qualified to enter secondary school… at this point when we have done about 386,000, we still have about 30, 000 to go.
“If you say you have closed admissions when in fact, you want to get more people into the system, then it doesn’t make sense to end the process. Headmasters are now going back to their schools. They have been in Ho the whole week. From Monday they are going to start their admissions so if by the end of today we say the process has ended and when they begin their admissions and realize that more students have not reported, they might need new postings…. So if you say you’ve closed, there may be more vacancies which might affect the schools.”
Initially, the CSSPS website encountered some challenges amidst error notices to some BECE graduates who visited the site for self-placement.
However, the government in an effort to ensure smooth registration, was said to have addressed the challenges with the setting up of a new website.
By Vincent Kubi