A spokesman for the Ministry of Education, Kwasi Kwarteng says it is not compulsory for 2023 BECE graduates to be admitted into various public second-cycle schools as 1st-year students to report to school on December 4, 2023.
“Resumption date for students within the SHS space remains Monday, December 4, 2023. The expectation is that students report on the first day. But let me also hasten to add that, the first-year students who are unable to report on the first day will not automatically lose their slots.
Students can report the following day or even the following week, as we have always witnessed. If you look at the academic calendar, it had already been within the public space for some time now and the expectation was that parents, guardians, and even students prepared ahead of time,” the Ministry spokesperson said in an interview.
His comment comes after Teacher Unions petitioned the management of the Ghana Education Service (GES) to postpone the reporting date for first-year Senior High School students (SHS) from December 4, 2023.
Teachers in a letter to the Director-General of GES, Dr Eric Nkansah said the date for the reporting of first-year students “appears not practicable because the placement and reopening dates are too close”.
“Asking form 1 students to report to school on December 4, 2023, only for them to go home again on 21 December 2023, for the Christmas holidays, will put “undue burden on students, staff, and parents,” it said.
The Unions indicated that the vacation period spanning from 21 December 2023 to 2 January 2024 “is too limited a time to offer staff members (both teaching and non-teaching) any meaningful rest”.
They therefore called on the management of the Ghana Education Service (GES) to “reconsider all these situations and effect changes to the December 4, 2023 reporting date for the 2023 BECE graduates.
The Unions are the Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT), the National Association of Graduate Teachers (NAGRAT), the Coalition of Concerned Teachers-Ghana (CCT-GH), and the Teachers’ and Educational Workers’ Union (TEWU).
The management of the Education Service in the press statement said that out of the 598,839 results received from the West African Examinations Council (WAEC), 585,797 BECE candidates qualified to be placed.
“A total of 477,772 (81.56%) prospective students have automatically been placed in one of their choices. This is a significant improvement compared to last year’s, with over 100,000 more students placed.
However, 108,025 (18.44%) qualified candidates could not be matched with any of their choices. All such students are, therefore. to do Self-Placement to select from available schools. To access the placement platform,” it said in the release.
Source: thisterm.com