Parents advised not to impose schools on wards

Mrs. Bernice Addae, the La Dadekotopon Municipal Director of Education, has advised parents to desist from imposing on their wards specific schools to select or courses to pursue, against the desires of their children.

Rather, she urged them to provide guidance and support to their wards during the schools and courses selection, by taking in to consideration the strength and capabilities of their wards.

Mrs Addae gave the advice when she sensitized parents and candidates on this year’s School Selection Procedure and the 2019 Policy Guidelines for the Computerized School Selection and Placement (CSSP), at the Fountain of Glory Assemblies of God Church in Accra.

This she said was to provide the parents, guardians and children the needed information that would inform their choice of schools and course and to minimize the annual overcrowding that characterizes the district Assembly.

“This year’s sensitization formed part of measures put in place by the Ghana Education Service (GES) to ensure a successful and problem-free placement, reduce human errors to promote efficiency and fairness in the selection and placement of students into the Senior High School (SHS)”, she added. She said, more often than not, parents turned to impose on their wards a particular school or course without taking in to account the interest of the child, just to satisfy their parochial desire.

“This should be a thing of the past. Your ward might get enrolled into Grade A school successfully to pursue the course you have chosen for him or her to study but he or she might end up not performing because he or she might not be interested, thereby, disrupting the child’s future”, she said.

Mrs. Addae disclosed that, this year, the Ministry of Education, as part of its effort to minimize the confusion that characterizes the school’s selection process, had released new guidelines.

She said that students were therefore required to select schools from 1st to 5th choices from a combination of categories A to E, adding that it was a requirement of every candidate to select programmes and residential status of their choice.

She also noted that all Junior High Schools in the country had been mapped to a Senior High School within the same location or catchment area of 16 kilometers.

“This is to make it easier for candidates and parents to identify schools they can select as day to satisfy the compulsory day requirement. This means that the compulsory day school is now restricted to candidate’s 5th choice”, she stated.

She also encouraged parents, especially candidates to remain calm and focused as the institution continued to put in place measures to release the schools’ selection register.