The New Patriotic Party (NPP) has demanded that the government urgently secure actual school places for the 54,985 BECE candidates who were initially left without senior high school placements and provide second-chance opportunities for 183,233 WASSCE candidates who failed to obtain a credit in Core Mathematics.
The party said more than 200,000 young Ghanaians risk having their education and career prospects disrupted unless the government moves quickly to provide practical alternatives.
In a statement signed by the NPP Policy Co-ordination Committee Chairman and Member of Parliament for Ofoase Ayirebi, Kojo Oppong Nkrumah, the party said the government must move beyond announcements and ensure that affected young people have a seat in a classroom, or a place on a course.
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The government has announced that 53,887 of the 54,985 affected BECE candidates can return to the Computerised School Selection and Placement System (CSSPS) portal to undertake self-placement.
The NPP, however, said access to the portal does not necessarily mean access to a school.
“Ghanaian parents and candidates will judge the resolution of the challenge by one thing only: how many of the original 54,985 are sitting in a classroom, not how many were allowed to open a website,” Mr Oppong Nkrumah said.
He warned that many schools and programmes originally selected by candidates could have exhausted their available spaces by the time the affected students return to the placement system.
“Access to the portal is not the same as access to a school,” he said.
Mr Oppong Nkrumah also questioned the apparent mismatch between the number of available school places and the number of candidates seeking placement.
He cited government figures indicating 859,828 vacancies for 623,072 BECE candidates.
“These figures suggest that Ghana does not necessarily have a shortage of school places,” he said. “What we appear to have is a shortage of places in the schools and programmes that candidates prefer.”
According to him, 313,283 candidates selected Category A schools as their first choice, while those schools collectively have only 76,417 places.
He called on the government to improve facilities, laboratories, teaching capacity and programmes in schools with unused spaces.
“Where there are unused spaces, government must ask why those spaces are unused and fix the reasons,” he said.
He also urged the government to utilise the 85 private schools participating in the Free SHS programme to accommodate some of the affected candidates.
“We cannot have available capacity and, at the same time, have thousands of children without a place to go,” he said.
The NPP also raised concerns over the 183,233 WASSCE candidates who completed senior high school without obtaining a credit in Core Mathematics.
Mr Oppong Nkrumah said the results could restrict their access to university degree programmes and other educational, vocational and employment opportunities.
He called for structured opportunities for the affected candidates to rewrite subjects, improve their results, acquire technical skills or undertake employment-oriented training.
“They deserve a second chance,” he said. “Government must provide avenues for them to rewrite the subjects they need, acquire practical skills and prepare themselves for productive employment.”
The MP pointed to existing programmes, including academic intervention initiatives, remedial programmes, Free TVET across 186 institutions, the National Apprenticeship Policy and the Ghana Jobs and Skills Project.
The government, he said, inherited these programmes, questioning how this have been scaled up to target young people who need them most.
The NPP also called for greater attention to teaching quality, learning time, instructional materials, attendance and student support, rather than attributing poor WASSCE performance mainly to stricter examination supervision.
The opposition party is demanding that the government publish the number of available TVET, apprenticeship and jobs-training opportunities for this year’s school leavers, broken down by region and trade.
It also wants the government to publish the final placement figures for the 54,985 affected BECE candidates and clarify the rules and pass mark used in the placement process, including when the criteria were approved.
“This cannot be another emergency response every time examination results are released,” Mr Oppong Nkrumah said.
“We need a proactive system that tells every young person who does not obtain the required academic result what the next available pathway is.”
He warned that the affected students could not afford to wait for another emergency response.
“The clock is ticking for these young people. Government must act now to protect their educational opportunities and their future livelihoods,” he said.