Parents, Students Outraged Over Non SHS Placement After a Year

On Tuesday, 11 September 2018, eleven former students of the Green Pastures School, Awoshie, in the Greater Accra region have expressed disappointment their juniors are starting Senior High School (SHS) while they stay home for the second year running.

The West African Examinations Council (WAEC) last year withheld and later cancelled the Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) results of these 11 students.

However, the hopes of these students to be placed in high schools this year after resitting and passing the withheld subjects – English and Mathematics, have been dashed.

Speaking on Accra-based Citi FM on Tuesday, 11 September 2018, some parents expressed frustration at the process and the traumatic effect it had on their wards.

A parent stated that his daughter had gone through a lot, “she’s been traumatised, this year for instance has not been easy for her”.

He stated there was still no placement for his daughter this year, “but the evidence is otherwise. I’ve her last year’s results over here, English language was withheld and later cancelled. The rest of the grades are: Social studies-1, RME-2, Mathematics-1, Integrated Science-2, ICT-2, French-4, Twi-2, BDT-2.

“Strangely the Mathematics that they’re claiming she had aggregate 9, when she did the resit, she had aggregate-1, and the English that was withheld and later cancelled, she actually did the resit and had aggregate 3 in English, so I mean where from the aggregate 9 in mathematics or English?

“They’re growing, they’ve stayed in the house for one year, so, if they don’t do something about it, it means it’s going to be two years”.

A student also lamented : “I completed [Junior High School] last year and my younger brother completed this year, he is in school and I’m at home. I checked my school this year but the results I had was grade 9 in either English or Maths so no placement.

“After the resit, our results were in but they told us to wait this year so that we’ll go with our juniors.”

The 11 students are however among the 3000 the Deputy Minister of Education, Dr Yaw Adu Twum said will be placed this year.

Meanwhile, the assistant administrator of the school, Mr Enoch Opoku has said the school will be compelled to sue the Ghana Education Service (GES) and the ministry if they do not honour their promise of placing the students.

He said: “We saw the deputy minister of education last week at Peace FM and he promised that the government is working on such students and they’re over 3000 students who are affected and they’re working on that, so we should come and we’ll hear from them soon.

“We want the government to make sure that the Ministry of Education has enrolled our 11 students. Probably, we’ll go to court if that will solve the case for us.”