The available spaces are expected to accommodate about 90 per cent of candidates who sat this year’s Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE).    

Mr Sherif Sulemana, National Coordinator of the Computerised School Selection and Placement System, disclosed this in an interview monitored by the Ghana News Agency in Accra.    

He said more than 620,000 candidates sat the examination nationwide and would be allowed to select a maximum of two Category A schools under the placement system.    

Mr Sulemana said candidates were required to select eight schools in order of preference, indicate their preferred programmes and specify whether they wished to attend as boarding or day students.    

“The system first picks the candidate based on the aggregate score, then the programme, and boarding space. Now, once the results are released, we take the merit file from WAEC, then we do vacancy declarations at the SHSs to ensure there are spaces available for these candidates.    

“Once they are done with that, we take that the data and match the choice against the grade and against the availability of space in the secondary schools. And so, it’s quite competitive,” he said.    

Mr Sulemana explained that placement would be based on candidates’ examination aggregates, programme choices, boarding preferences and the availability of vacancies declared by schools after the release of the BECE results.   

Mr Hashmin Mohammed, Press Secretary to the Minister of Education, said senior high schools were ready to receive the new students.    

He said the Ministry of Education was undertaking infrastructure projects to expand capacity in response to increasing enrolment under the Free SHS policy.    

“It is the expectation of the Ministry that within two academic years we should be able to have those infrastructures ready because we are going to upgrade some of the schools and then build new schools in some of the regions,” he said.