Executive Director of Africa Education Watch (Eduwatch), Kofi Asare, has argued that Ghana’s recurring school placement crisis stems significantly from the erosion of previously effective policy safeguards, particularly the removal of the catchment area system, rather than a straightforward shortage of school infrastructure alone.
Analysing this year’s placement figures, Asare noted that 604,000 candidates qualified for placement, roughly 60,000 more than in 2024 and about 80,000 more than in 2025, reflecting the highest ever number of BECE candidates recorded at 619,000.
He explained that with vacancies standing at approximately 800,000 against roughly 600,000 candidates, the system technically maintains a surplus of around 200,000 spaces.
Demand For Specific Schools, Not Overall Shortage
According to Asare, the core tension driving dissatisfaction is not an absolute shortage of spaces, but rather intense demand for a limited number of highly rated schools that have effectively been fully subscribed.
He explained that once demand and supply meet for these specific institutions, categorised as Category A or B schools, candidates seeking placement there find no further vacancies available, despite overall system-wide surplus.
“Schools that do not exist means I have been placed, but I want a particular school, irrespective of the facilities, and that school is chopped because demand and supply have already met,”
Kofi Asare
Asare noted that this year’s 87.3 percent automatic placement rate represents a continuation of steady improvement recorded over recent years, with automatic placement rates hovering between 80 and 81 percent in 2023, 2024 and 2025, up from below 70 percent around 2021.
However, he cautioned that automatic placement alone should not be treated as the sole indicator of an effective system, since the quality and appropriateness of a placement matters as much as the simple fact of being placed.
Three Categories of Complaints Identified
Drawing on direct observation at resolution centres, Asare identified three distinct categories of affected candidates.
The first comprises students placed as day students in districts far from their homes, a problem he said had already been resolved through the introduction of a catchment area system by 2021, which restricted day school selection to within a defined radius of a candidate’s junior high school.
The second category involves candidates placed in schools they never selected, a problem Asare said had similarly been addressed by around 2019, when the system was redesigned to place unqualified candidates on a waiting list for self-placement rather than assigning them to unselected institutions.
The third category comprises candidates dissatisfied with placement into Category C schools, despite meeting placement criteria, reflecting continued demand for the country’s roughly 94 Category A schools out of approximately 1,000 public second-cycle institutions nationwide.
Catchment Area Removal Cited as Key Regression
Asare expressed concern that the catchment area rule, which had functioned effectively since its introduction, appeared to have been removed from the current placement system, reintroducing problems the sector had previously resolved through years of engagement and research, including a 2018-2019 study that uncovered underage girls living in unsafe makeshift accommodation after being placed as day students far from home.
He recommended that government consider reverting to the 2024 version of the placement software, arguing that current challenges suggest a departure from the more refined system previously in place.
“A policy has an owner, and the policy owner is the one who will be held responsible for policy failure, not the beneficiary,”
Kofi Asare
Infrastructure Quality and Boarding Capacity Questioned
While acknowledging that raw vacancy figures show a surplus, Asare cautioned against treating headline numbers as the full picture, noting that a significant proportion of declared vacancies are day school spaces of limited appeal to candidates outside those districts.
He further questioned how many of the reported vacancies represent boarding places, given that an estimated 95 percent of Ghanaian candidates prefer boarding school placement.
The quantity of the declared vacancy is one thing, whether the quality of the vacancy meets the demand is another, how many of the additional school spaces are boarding spaces, we have to ask all these questions.
He framed the mismatch between boarding demand and available boarding capacity as a more precise diagnosis of the current crisis than infrastructure shortage in isolation.
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