Free SHS: How BECE graduates can secure Automatic School Placement

The most stressful time BECE graduates come face to face with disappointment is when they miss the Automatic School Placement. Should this happen, the GES through CSSPS require candidates to do the self-placement. Just getting to know that you missed the Automatic School Placement is enough to cause stress.

In this article, we will attempt to help you and your students strategize how to achieve the all-important Automatic School Placement for the school you want to receive tuition at the Senior High Level.

READ:BECE Candidates Excited: No Cut-Off Point for SHS- GES

What is Automatic School Placement?

This is the placement of students based on merit. Thus the student meets the basic requirements for placement into a school and so is awarded or placed in the school out of the choices made during the school selection stage.

The above means every one of the five (5) Senior High Schools selected by a candidate must be carefully chosen because they can place you in any of them.

Advice: The tendency of candidates to make choices without considering the possibility of being placed in the school must be stopped.

With the Automatic School Placement, the system does the placement with no manual human intervention.

READ: School Placement, Blame Chaos on NDC at Independence Square- Dr Opoku-Prempeh

How does the Automatic School Placement work?

Now if a candidate selects Achimota High as his or her First Choice and has a Business Option and Boarding as accommodation, he or she would be automatically placed in this school if the student’s aggregate or raw score falls within the range of scores that should merit admission into Achimota SHS to do study business.

The system also checks in the process of placing the student, things like residential status, and places the candidate if there is space for the boarding accommodation.

In an instance where a candidate meets the raw score requirement and there are spaces for the programme but the kind of accommodation chosen is not available, the candidate will be moved to the second choice for placement.

FACT 1: This is one of the reasons why parents complain that their ward obtained very good grade/raw score but was not offered admission in say Achimota SHS but his or her friend with a lower grade got the same school but day. Yes with his case, the day option is available hence he was placed. That is the logic that the system understands.

Sometimes, the student will make the grades and the accommodation is available but the raw scoreS competing for the number of placement available may be better than yours and so you miss the chance.

FACT 2: The school selection system will not place a student who opted for boarding even if he makes the grades. It will also not place a low raw score ahead of the higher one.

Sometimes the competition for a particular programme can lead to a good student missing out in the automatic placement.

To avoid the possibility of missing the placement and being pushed into what the GES calls tie-breaking which makes it more challenging and like a penalty shoot out parents must be guided by the following advice.

1. Choose schools based on your ward’s academic strength, not your taste or preference.

2. It is not compulsory to make your first choice from the best set of schools category where the likes of Presec, Achimota and Aburi Girls are classified. There is so much merit competition. You can start making your school selection from the second choice.

3. Find out from your ward’s teachers his or her raw scores in the last two mocks, find an average of the two. If for instance, the raw scores add up to 300. Do not attempt to choose schools from option A. You can start from B or C. There are good schools in those categories. For those choosing option A schools, raw scores between 390 and 450 are advised.

4. Opt for Day as accommodation type in schools and you stand a better chance of gaining admission than if you opt for boarding facilities.

With this and other strategies, parents can make better school selection choices for their wards and save themselves from the stress that comes with knowing that your ward has not being placed in any of the five choices.  In all these the raw score places a critical row just as the accommodation type.

Source: Wisdom Hammond