Former Education Minister, Dr. Yaw Adutwum, has called for a redesign of the Computerised School Selection and Placement System (CSSPS) to enable unplaced BECE candidates to benefit from the self-placement module.
Speaking on Eyewitness News on Tuesday, September 9, which was monitored by Ghanaianradar, he warned that the current system could still shut out candidates if they are not listed as eligible for self-placement.
He expressed concern over the high number of candidates left out of the initial 2026 placement, suggesting it could point to a flaw in the placement system.
According to him, the Free SHS policy was intentionally structured to eliminate the old cut-off system, which he said denied about 100,000 candidates access to secondary education annually.
He argued that a rigid cut-off unfairly affected children from rural and deprived communities who may not have had the same level of preparation for the BECE as those in urban centres.
He, therefore, cautioned that merely asking unplaced candidates to do self-placement would not resolve the issue if the CSSPS platform had already excluded them from the pool of students qualified to select schools.
“If this is the case, then the software developers have to go and redesign the system. Otherwise, when they go and they want to find a school, their name will not be on the system for them to find the school because the system will have excluded them,” he said.
His remarks come after the Ministry of Education announced that 54,985 BECE candidates who missed out on the initial placement can now use the self-placement process to choose from schools with available vacancies.
