Mr. Samuel Oppong, National Coordinator of Computerised School Selection and Placement System (CSSPS), on Tuesday said results of the 2012 Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) would be ready by July 30 for placements in August.

He said the list of all successful candidates and their schools would be submitted to the Regional and District Education Directorates, Senior High Schools (SHS), Technical and Vocational Institutes and Junior High Schools (JHS).

Mr Oppong was briefing the Minister of Education, Mr. Lee Ocran, during a familiarisation visit to the Secretariat and inspection of on-going projects as well as have a fair idea about how the placements were done.

He said the placement forms for individual candidates would be posted on the internet for each qualified student, adding that candidates would have access to their result slips and placement forms by printing from the internet.

Mr. Oppong said the CSSPS since its inception in 2005 had worked to improve upon the manual system of selection and placement of qualified BECE candidates into public and private SHS, technical and vocational institutes, by using the total processed raw scores of six subjects instead of grades, by candidates for selection.

He explained that the Secretariat dealt with three categories of students for selection and placement every year, which included qualified candidates who completed BECE that year, re-entry candidates who completed BECE three years ago and foreign students.

According to Mr. Oppong, under the system, candidates could choose schools from any of the 10 Regions and that the selection and placement of candidates was more transparent adding, delays in the selection and placement of candidates had been reduced as well as human errors had been eliminated.

However, he said the Secretariat faced some challenges, including the non-acceptance of placement of results, inaccurate data provided by candidates during registration by the West African Examination Council, and lack of parental participation in the registration of their children.

The choice of school without reference to parent’s financial preparedness, and availability of boarding facilities and programmes as well as parents' insistence that their children should be placed in their first choice schools were some of the challenges facing the Secretariat.

He noted that it had however, introduced school digest to advertise all SHS and T/VI , continued training of CSSPS frontline implementers, continued and intensified public education about activities of the CSSPS .

Mr Oppong said: “We have arranged with WAEC to release results to the general public and CSSPS Secretariat at the same time in 2012”.

He assured the Minister that the Secretariat was working round the clock to ensure that the 2012 selection and placement come out successful and on time.

Mr. Ocran commended the Secretariat for their performance over the years to ensure success of the system since its inception in 2005.

He emphasised that the system had been transparent over the years and in the interest of all, and urged parents to understand and accept their children's placement in schools.

Mr. Ocran urged the Secretariat to initiate a programme that would make parents have access and the opportunity to visit the Secretariat and observe how the placements were done in order for them to clear all forms of misconceptions about their operations.**