Ghana’s education minister acknowledges problems with senior high school placements
Ghana’s Minister of Education, Haruna Iddrisu, has acknowledged problems with this year’s placement of students in senior high schools, but said the widely cited figure of about 55,000 candidates does not mean that all of them have been left without a school place. He said this on the Newsfile programme, MyJoyOnline reports.
According to the minister, about 604,000 students are in the computerized school selection and placement system. Of these, 527,000, or 87%, have already received places. A number of educational institutions still have vacancies, although they may not match the preferences of students and their parents.
Demand for Category A schools
Iddrisu named significant demand for Category A schools as one of the main problems. According to his data, between 313,000 and 328,000 applications were submitted to such institutions, while their total number of available places is about 76,000.
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The minister said the government seeks to eliminate structural shortcomings in the computerized school selection and placement system rather than merely resolve individual cases of placement difficulties. He also acknowledged that the availability of vacancies in itself does not remove families’ concerns if the available places are not in their chosen schools.
School choices after exam results
This year, students had to wait for their exam results before making their final school choices. According to Iddrisu, the change was intended to help students and parents make more informed decisions in light of academic results and admission chances.
Earlier, the system’s secretariat reported that of nearly 620,000 participants in the 2026 exam, about 565,000 met the criteria for placement. About 55,000 candidates initially did not meet the requirements after receiving an unsatisfactory result in English or mathematics. The ministry later clarified that candidates with a grade of 9 in English or mathematics may use the self-placement procedure among schools with available places.
