2019 SHS placement is the best ever – NAPO

The Education Minister, Mathew Opoku Prempeh, has described the 2019 SHS placement system as the best ever despite its many challenges.

According to him, the records clearly show that this year’s placement system is an improvement on the previous years that the Computerised School Selection Placement System has been in effect.

His comments days after chaotic scenes at the Black Star Square in Accra when hundreds of desperate parents, guardians and students besieged the Accra Solution Centre set up by the GES to handle concerns relating to the placement of prospective students in SHSs and TVIs.

In the process, seven people, including four female students, a pregnant woman and two male students, collapsed and were rushed to the Greater Accra Regional Hospital, where they were treated and discharged.

According to sources, the incident happened when the parents and the students surged forward in a frantic effort to reach officials at the centre.

The chaotic situation compelled the officials to call for police reinforcement to instil law and order at the venue.

As a result of the confusion, officials of the exercise suspended. Some students who were also posted to some schools and had gone through the process to prepare turned up on the day to be told that the names of their children were no longer on the school list.

Speaking at a Press Conference on Thursday, the Education Minister reiterated his claims that people were urged by the opposition to misbehave at the Independence Square to cause disaffection for the government.

“We are going to in place measure so that this thing won’t happen next year. Another fact we have resolutions centres in 16 regions not only Greater Accra…in the 15 regions we never heard what happened in Accra.

“So maybe next year we will expand our call-in centres and increase the number of people so that people who want to take advantage of demonstrating can go to the police and demonstrate but not use the pretext of school placement system to portray and create the impression that it is the worst, this year is the best since we started in 2005 and the records are there to show.”