Head of public relations unit at the Ghana Education Service (GES), Cassandra Twum Ampofo, has assured the batch of students who wrote the 2023 Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) but were unable to get their school of choice of enough vacancies in other schools.

According to her, the GES is committed to ensuring students are placed in schools of their choice. However, she indicated that if students are unable to get into any of their preferred choices, such students will be allowed to do a self-placement.

“Three days ago, we released the placement into senior high schools. Out of the 598,839 results received from WAEC, we had 585,797 qualify to be placed. So, per our system, we were able to place 477,772, representing 81.57%, a huge significant increase compared to last year.
“Again, we had 108, 025 that could not be matched with any of their choices… That is why after the placement, we upload all schools that still have vacancies. I must say that we have enough vacancies…”
Cassandra Twum Ampofo

Ms Ampofo revealed that there has been massive improvement in the number of students who got their preferred schools. She stated that this year for instance, the GES had over 100,000 candidates more getting schools of their choices.

“Last year, we also had 165,619 students that did self-placement, they could not be matched with any of their choices. This year, it’s 108, 025, so it tells you that we have a number of students getting their choices. Again, you still cannot get all of them getting their choices because they have limits…”
Cassandra Twum Ampofo

Students urged to undertake self-placements

Furthermore, Ms Ampofo highlighted that for this year, the GES gave students an opportunity to choose five schools in addition to the original number of six schools, all in a bid to ensure no student is left out of placement.

“So, this year’s selection they chose eleven schools – so, they have the first six schools, and they have a backup of five… So, if you fall off your six choices, we also come to look at your backup five and let the algorithm put you in one of the choices depending on the grade that you had.
“Those that were not able to match their choices on merit, they are the ones that fell under the 108,025. I must say again that we have enough schools for them to do self-placement and no need to fear at all.”
Cassandra Twum Ampofo

Touching on whether the GES is surprised at the number of students who were not placed, the GES head of public relations unit stated that her outfit has improved over the years.

She iterated that the current number of student who have not been placed in schools has decreased compared to the previous years.

“It tells us that the plans or the strategies that we’ve put in place are working and of course, we’ll sit again after everything and just as we do after every placement, we have a team that sits together and assesses the things that went wrong, right, the strategies that we put in place and then we re-strategize and plan for the next year.”
Cassandra Twum Ampofo