The Ghana Education Service (GES) has announced the extension of the deadline for placement of BECE candidates in the various senior high schools in the country.

The deadline for candidates to check their results and placement online expired on Saturday, however, the GES said it has extended the deadline following reports that many candidates have not been able to access their results and placement.

A statement signed by Acting Director-General of the Ghana Education Service (GES) Prof. Kwasi Opoku-Amankwa last Thursday said, 267, 327 candidates secured places in schools of their choice, whilst 150,770 candidates could not be placed in schools of their choice. Such students are however being given the second chance of choosing a school.

But the GES Boss in an interview explained that the Service realized that 48 hours deadline coincided with the long holiday and weekend, with many of the candidate unable to check their results because they couldn’t purchase the scratch cards.

He noted that the deadline has been extended to Tuesday 5th September by which time they expect the candidates to have concluded the process.

“In the past for candidates of that kind, we used our own discretion to place them in schools and we had challenges, they complained that they’ve been placed in schools that they did not select. This time round we want people to do their self-placement and we want them to do it online. Our idea is that everybody who passed should have the opportunity to go to school. We expect that by Tuesday we’ll look at the numbers and if there’s the need for us to get back to it, we’ll do that.”

Prof Opoku-Amankwa added: “The whole idea is that we want them to go to school by 11th September. In the past admission and placement could go on till the end of the first term. We also realized that there’re complaints about the number of terms students spend in school to write the WASSCE. We’re taking various measures to ensure that they have their full nine terms in the schools, and this is one of them.”

The 2017/18 academic year for all senior high schools will commence on 11th September2017.

All form one students are also expected to report to their schools on that day.