GES’s Shambolic Self Placement System: Very annoying and disgusting 

The Ghana Education Service and the Ministry of Education must bow their heads in shame for introducing an inefficient system for school placement at the expense of the taxpayer.

All stakeholders expected the system to be efficient and reliable but it turned out to be the reverse in the estimation of the general public. 

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Self Placement System Changed Without Notice

“They have changed everything n have provided only skull outside catchment area that students can not afford to attend. What is wrong with this people” This is comment on the GES Facebook official page.

The GES told the general public that the nes school selection system was fair but this was not. How can a fair system have people being placed through protocol? The GES never mentioned it palced students through the protocal but it spilled the beans in its last press statement.

Another disgruntled member of the public asked on the GES FB page “This one that you’re announcing the closure of protocol admissions, did you announce the opening of the same?”

It is difficult to comprehend why the GES cannot get the school placement portal system right once and for all. 

 Sadly, the self-placement was not available on Tuesday and Wednesday and when it came back many of the schools had been  removed after the update.

Other features like buying of eVouhers was also removed. One wonders if the system was well tested and perfected before it was rolled out.

What happened to intensive simulation which is one of the best practices used to test systems and subject them to rigorous testing before they are made accessible to users? 

People did the required self-placement only to get to their schools and be told they should go home to do another placement. It looks as though the Ghana Education Service is punishing students for their inefficient system.

Suggestions to deal with Shambolic Self Placement System

This year, the system was worse compared to previous years. The traffic to the site was more than the system could take. Sadly, GES and the MOE could do little about it.

I have these simple layman suggestions to offer to our learned leaders handling such systems.

1. Do not host more than one placement portal with the same hosting company. This way, if things go bad on one host or domain, the other will serve clients.

2. When you set up your systems, have a third website on standby just in case all the two go down as was the case. 

3. The school placements can be loaded into five websites for students to access. This can be done by clustering regions into placement portals 1,2,3,4 and five or use the region initials for that. Example if GES loads placements for students who wrote the exams in Greater Accra and Eastern Region on one of the five portals, it can be named GAER.

This means only students from these two regions can access their placements on this portal. This will ensure, traffic is reduced on each of the sites and students and parents do not go through the unnecessary stress. 

4. Better still, scrap the computerized school selection and placement system if you cannot perfect an efficient system online. 

Parents and students cannot be subjected to this annual stress. First, it was a malfunctioning school selection softer ware then, it became a placement portal that cannot function efficiently. 

The Ghana Education Service and the GES must wake up, do more talk less and reduce the press statements and be proactive a bit more. We believe you can do it but, you are not impressing anyone yet but yourselves. 

Source: Wsidom Eli Kojo Hammond