SHS re-opening won’t be postponed – GES

• Posted on September 7, 2018
• by Ellsamwise King
• Comment

The Ghana Education Service (GES) has said postponing the re-opening date of Senior High Schools as has been suggested by some teacher unions is not an option.

“GES has issued out the resumption date or the date for the commencement of the first year students of the double track students, and we have not changed it. It remains so,”  the Deputy Public relations Officer of the GES, Isaac Aseidu Odei said.

He argued that a postponement of the re-opening will affect the academic calendar if accepted.

“Even though we have heard GNAT’s advise, we have not changed our position for the resumption of the schools for the first years.”

The Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT) called for an extension of the reopening date for Senior High Schools.

Both continuing and fresh students of the schools are to re-open next Tuesday, September 11.

But GNAT has complained that there has not been enough notice for first-year students who just received placement on Monday.

Despite the GES’ stance, Mr. Asiedu said there was still room for some flexibility.

“We also know that the fact that we have set 11^th September as the reopening day doesn’t mean we expect every student to report that day. We know the mechanism of students enrolling as they begin schooling when they start a new academic year,” he said.

Placement challenges

Some students are yet to be placed by the Computerized School Selection Placement System (CSSPS) despite the reopening being days away.

The GES has said it devising measures to address the placement challenges.

One of these measures has seen the Education Ministry temporarily resort to the manual system of placement to tackle these challenges.

Over 67,ooo students who qualified for senior high schools (SHS) were not placed by CSSPS because they could not be matched with any of their school choices.

They have however been asked to do self-placement to get themselves into schools with vacancies.