General News of Wednesday, 6 September 2017

Source: Nana Kwabena Agyare

NPP playing 'elimination tactics' with SHS placement - NDC MP

Daniel Ashiamah, MP for Baika Buem Daniel Ashiamah, MP for Baika Buem

Member of Parliament for Buem in the Volta Region, Hon Daniel Ashiamah has accused the ruling New Patriotic Party of orchestrating ways to restrict the number of people to be admitted into the free senior high school program.

According to him, the change in the placement system where students who were not placed are to do manual selection from a list of schools provided by the GES is a deliberate attempt to deny some members of the pubic admission to continue schooling.

Speaking on Yensempa show to host Bonohene Baffour Awuah, the Buem MP advised the Minister of Education to admit the students in batches. According to him, if this is done, the pressure on the website and other institutions involved in the process to do the manual placement will be reduced and each student will have the opportunity to enrol into a senior High school.

“The ministry can admit in batches. There was no deadlines for school placement when the NDC was in power. There shouldn’t be any timeline on issues regarding education. Initially the cut-off point was Aggregate 36 but now I’m hearing it has been reduced to 32 or 30.

The NPP should have increased the cut-off point to 40 so that everyone can enrol in the free SHS program so that about 80 to 90 percent of Ghanaian youth to can read and write. This is elimination by strategy; thus an attempt to deny some people the opportunity to go to school”, he said.

The Buem MP, compared the actions of the GES and the ministry of Education to that of a passenger missing a flight but this time round there was a desire for people to miss the flight.

GES last week gave the opportunity to students who did not get their first choice of schools to choose an alternative before the close of Thursday, 7th September, 2017.

The Ministry of Education and Ghana Education service have come under intense criticism over the numerous challenges that have popped in the computerise school selection program.