Police save official from angry parents

Accra, Oct. 18, GNA - The police on Monday moved in to save an official of the Ghana Education Service (GES) from being attacked, as angry parents showed their fangs over the placement of their wards in senior secondary schools.

The Greater Accra Regional Education Office Coordinator of the Computerized School Selection and Placement System (CSSPS), Mrs Adelaide Amoh, said she feared being beaten by the aggrieved parents, who had been besieging her office demanding amidst insults to know where their wards were placed in the second phase of the senior secondary school placement.

Mrs Amoh thus, locked herself in her office with some of the district officers, who came to take their lists and waited for the arrival of the police before she released the lists. Speaking to the Ghana News Agency in Accra, Mrs Amoh said the office received the second phase of the placement lists on Monday, which was for candidates, who were not placed at all in the first placement carried out nationwide under the system.

She said the lists were to be given to the various district examination officers in the regions, who would deliver them to the heads of the junior secondary schools they attended to display in their schools for parents to check their wards placement. According to her, the parents did not understand why some of the lists were placed at the regional office and the second batch in question should be sent to the various JSS.

They asked that the regional office should also display the list for them to check their wards placements.

Others complained that they were tired moving from one place to the other and could still not trace their wards names. Mrs Amoh explained that the first placement, which was posted were responses to petitions parents had written requesting for replacement of their wards because they did not want the schools in which their wards were placed.

She said that the petitions were many and the CSSPS centre was still working on them in phases, so it was not possible to finish all at one time.

The police managed to maintain calm the parents down and Mrs Amoh was later called to come and explain the situation to the milling parents.

While she was explaining the issues, some of the parents screamed she was wasting their time and said and one shouted, "we are looking for school, what you are talking about will not help us give us schools."