A total of 518,717 students out of the 555,353 who qualified for placement have successfully been placed into various Senior High and Technical, Vocational Education and Training (TVET) institutes across the country as of last Friday.

Representing 93.4 per cent of those qualified for placement, 320,773 of the number have also enrolled on various SHS and TVET schools representing 61.84 per cent of the schools they are placed in.

The Minister for Education, Dr Yaw Osei Adutwum, who announced this at a press briefing in Accra lauded the various stakeholders involved in the placement and urged them to continue working hard to ensure that all qualified candidates are enrolled in one school or the other.

On TVET, as of Friday evening, 51,267 students have been placed in only TVET schools of which 25,941 had also enrolled.

The Education Minister lamented the failure of parents and students to follow laid down procedures that had been communicated to all stakeholders before the commencement of the placement exercise.

He cited for instance parents whose children were not placed in any school at all  and who were asked to do self-placement, but rather stormed the resolution centres meant for those who had been placed but had challenges with boarding or day status due to their location, change of courses among others leading to a seaming congestion.

“I wonder why some parents waited till schools reopened before they started rushing to do either self-placement or rushing to the resolution centres across the country which were virtually empty during the first week of the placement exercise,” Dr Adutwum said.

He stated that reports received from all regions across the country indicated that the first week of their operations at the resolution centres saw only a few people coming to them for assistance.

The Coordinator of the Free SHS Secretariat, Mr William Darkwah, on his part said, the secretariat was now poised to embark on an enrolment drive to ensure that all placed students are enrolled.

To this, he called on various stakeholders in communities to complement the government’s effort by assisting brilliant but needy students in their communities who had been placed in any school with some of the items needed so they could enrol.

Mr Darkwah urged Municipal, Metropolitan and District Assemblies to take a keen interest in the education of people in their areas.

Source: The Ghanaian Times