Executive Director of Africa Education Watch, Kofi Asare, has advised parents to temper their expectations of the ongoing 2025 Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) placement exercise.
His remarks follow Tuesday, September 23 scenes at the Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT) Hall in Accra where parents and their wards in their hundreds thronged the center to make inquiries and complain about placements
A majority were angered by misplaced postings, unfilled school choices, and difficulties in accessing schools of choice.
The answer starts with the parents, as we have more space in schools than we actually need. That is, we have the space to accommodate all the 590,000 students that want to be placed this year.
"But the issue is that even though the country has space in our secondary schools, the space does not meet the full expectations, tastes and preferences of parents and, by extension, the candidates," he said.
School placement, to him, could not be asserted as an absolute right but must be viewed within the framework of merit and competition.
"One of the problems is the over-democratisation of school placement, where you are led to believe that you have the right to choose. But that is not absolute. It is relative in a merit-based system. You can want to go to Labone SHS to read science, but you must also understand that the school is a competitive Category B school.".
"So, your chance of getting there is not only a matter of choosing but also of achieving a competitive grade based on the course that you are choosing, whether you want to be a day student or not. These two things determine the degree of competition," he explained.
Mr. Asare also added that equitable access to education requires parents to embrace all schools in all categories, rather than focusing on a few oversubscribed schools.
"So, parents need to understand that it is not possible for any government to offer them the choice of a school of their preference for their wards. The only way we can make access to second-cycle school as accessible as possible is to make all schools, regardless of their categories, patronised by parents," he stressed.
Speaking on the matter during the Citi Breakfast Show on Tuesday, September 23, Mr. Asare explained that even though the country has more than enough space to take in the 590,000 students who sat this year's BECE, the problem comes about due to competition for particular schools and programmes.