The self-placement segment of the SHS admission for this year should be nearing its end.
While the whole exercise, the Computerised School Selection and Placement System (CSSPS) has been generally successful, with minimal hitches, these could not originate from the Free Senior High School Secretariat.
The generally improved picture nonetheless, some persons have sought to give the process a bad name so they can hang those implementing the exercise.
Public service is difficult especially when it is mired in partisan politics. There are people who easily find faults with every process without thinking about how they have contributed to the challenges being encountered.
Currently, some parents whose wards have been placed already through the self-placement process and not satisfied, are grumbling. Their complaints are not clear even though there are opportunities for them to change the schools which have come their way.
With resolution desks set up for parents to seek assistance, it beats our imagination that people take delight in spreading unfounded rumours about public officers responsible for implementing the admission policy.
Those who choose to encourage the selling of so-called admissions even when the authorities have warned against that should hold themselves responsible when their fingers are bitten.
The Ministry of Education and for that matter the Ghana Education Service have done all that is required to ensure a seamless admission process.
The cooperation of the parents and the public at large is critical in such matters.
Every school has a limited number of places and so when these are exceeded, there are bound to be challenges. Under such circumstances, students are sent to their second choices but when this happens, tongues wag about so-called underhand dealings sometimes without evidence.
We are, however, aware about how some school heads are making things difficult for parents and when this is verifiable, remedial action should be taken.
We have heard about some school authorities, for instance, claiming that some items are unavailable but these can be provided privately by the same authorities.
It is our stance therefore, that the GES as the overseeing authority, should be able to determine some of these underhand dealings by bad school authorities with a view to stemming them.
Besides the resolution centres, parents should be able to report issues which constitute moral breaches. This is the only way that we can restore decency in our school admission process.
So much efforts and funds have gone into facilitating the admission process and so anything with the tendency to throw spanners into the works should be stopped forthwith.
It has been a successful admission season and we do hope that next year would witness an improvement over this year’s.