Five regions have so far declared 58,000 vacancies in their senior high schools and technical institutes, for the placement of this year’s Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) candidates.
The regions that have declared vacancies are the Central, Greater Accra, Volta, Upper West and the Upper East.
The Central Region has declared 29,169 while Greater Accra has 23,753 vacancies, with the Volta Region declaring 2,880.
The Upper West Region has 1,000 vacancies while the Upper East Region has 1,790.
According to the outgoing Co-ordinator of the Computerised Schools Selection and Placement System (CSSPS), Mr George Atta Boateng, the figures were provisional since not all the vacancies had been declared.
“So far, we have only 58,000 vacancies declared and that is bad,” he said.
Appeal to remaining schools
He appealed to the schools in the remaining five regions which were yet to declare their vacancies to do so since they were needed to enable the CSSPS to make the input for this year’s placement exercise.
This year, Mr Atta Boateng said, an estimated 440,000 candidates were expected to be placed. They are 438,000 regular BECE candidates, 1,200 resitters, 700 re-entry candidates and 200 foreign students.
“We have received from WAEC the biodata of 438,000 candidates. The biodata include names, index numbers and photographs.”
He said what the secretariat is doing now is data validation and error correction. That, he said, is being done to avoid mistakes in the placement of students.
For instance, he said, in picking a code, a male/female candidate might choose a female/male school, and the error correction was to address such problems.
“We do this to prevent the problems that occur after the placement. We are going through 440,000 files of students this year,” he said.
Parents, he said, should be rest assured, “because this year’s placement will be better than the previous year. Every year we improve upon what we do.”
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Source: Graphic Online