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BECE Candidates to Choose Senior High Schools After Results Under New System

In a significant policy shift announced, the Minister for Education, Hon. Haruna Iddrisu, revealed that BECE candidates will now select their preferred Senior High Schools (SHS) only after the release of their examination results.

This change marks a departure from the long-standing practice where students chose schools before sitting for the Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE), often without knowing their actual performance.

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New Policy Entails

Under the reformed system:

Candidates will be given a mandatory one-week window after the official release of BECE results to finalise and confirm their school choices.
Selections will be based on the candidate’s actual aggregate scores rather than guesses or predictions.
The policy applies to placement into Senior High Schools, Senior High Technical Schools, and TVET institutions.

Minister Haruna Iddrisu explained during the media briefing:

“In the past, students selected schools without knowing their aggregate, and that affected the placement system. This time, we will provide a mandatory period of one week after results are declared for students to confirm their choices based on their performance.”

He added that the reform is part of broader efforts to improve the Computerised School Selection and Placement System (CSSPS), enhance fairness, reduce placement challenges, and increase overall efficiency in SHS admissions.

Why this Change

The old system had several drawbacks:

Many students chose highly competitive Category A schools without realistic chances, leading to disappointment when results came out.
Over-subscription in popular schools and under-subscription in others created imbalances.
Pressure on parents and candidates to make “safe” guesses rather than informed decisions.
High rate of appeals and manual interventions after placement.

The new approach allows students (with guidance from parents and teachers) to align their choices more accurately with their academic performance, potentially reducing stress and improving satisfaction with placements.

How the New Process

Although full implementation details are still being finalised by the Ghana Education Service (GES), the expected flow is:

BECE examinations are written.
Results are released by WAEC.
A one-week window opens for candidates to log into the CSSPS portal and select/confirm their preferred schools based on their aggregates.
The system then runs the placement algorithm.
Placement results are released.

This gives candidates time to research school programmes, cut-off points from previous years, and make realistic choices (e.g., mixing Category A, B, and C schools appropriately).