General News of Wednesday, 8 February 2023

Source: happyghana.com

School Placement Scandal: Replace every single staff member – Education Minister advised

Minister of Education, Dr. Yaw Osei Adutwum Minister of Education, Dr. Yaw Osei Adutwum

The Minister of Education, Dr. Yaw Osei-Adutwum has been advised to dismiss staff who worked on the Computerized School Selection and Placement System (CSSPS) for the 2023 admissions into the various Senior High Schools across the country.

Ranking member of the Parliamentary Select Committee on Education, Peter Nortsu-Kotoe says this is the best move to eradicate future corruption.

To him, the staff of the ministry and the Ghana Education Service should be changed, with new people taking over from persons in post when this scandal took place.

Although investigations have not been concluded, he is of the view not all persons involved will be found and posits the culture of cash for placement has been established amongst current staff, hence his calls.

In an interview with Happy 98.9 FM’s Don Kwabena Prah on the ‘Epa Hoa Daben’ political talk show, he said, “The minister should sack anyone who worked in the department responsible for placements. He should fire them all and get a new team to start working there.”

He also called for the implementation of a robust monitoring system that will record keystrokes into the placement system, making it easy to identify unscrupulous persons altering school placements.

Eight persons have been arrested while Ghana’s Minister of Education, Dr. Yaw Osei-Adutwum, has been summoned by Parliament in what could be the beginning of a public probe into school placement corruption.

The arrests and summon are fallouts from a running story by The Fourth Estate, MFWA’s accountability journalism project, which has uncovered the activities of a cabal of fraudsters who can place students on Ghana’s computerised school placement platform.

After hitting the headlines, other revelations have been emerging as the story goes viral. These include indications that the fraudsters may have gained access to the computerised school placement platform through the Minister of Education