It has become a familiar ritual in Ghana. The moment Senior High School (SHS) placement results are released and some children fail to secure their preferred schools, the national conversation quickly moves away from education and into partisan politics.
NDC supporters blame the NPP, NPP supporters blame the NDC.
Parents blame the government, and government officials blame the system.
Somewhere in the middle of the noise is a 14- or 15-year-old child whose immediate concern is much simpler: “Where am I going to school?”
This year’s scenes at the CSSPS Resolution Centre at GNAT Hall in Accra should force us to pause.
Parents and students have endured long queues, repeated visits, and, in some cases, overnight stays while seeking solutions to placement problems.
Reports from the centre have included concerns about school choices, unsuccessful placement, and changes between boarding and day status. Some parents have called for additional resolution centres and more personnel.
These frustrations are real. But so is another uncomfortable truth: Not every disappointing placement is evidence of political manipulation.
Not every failure of the system is the fault of parents. The real conversation must be bigger than NDC versus NPP.
THE NUMBERS SHOULD MAKE US THINK
School placement is, fundamentally, a problem of matching demand with limited capacity.
The most popular schools cannot accommodate every child who wants to attend them.
That fact is sometimes lost in the political shouting.
A parent may genuinely believe that a child who performed well deserves a particular school. But thousands of other parents may believe exactly the same thing about their children.
When demand is greater than available places, disappointment is inevitable.
The question, therefore, is not simply whether a child got his or her first choice.
The more important questions are how were the choices made? Did the parent understand the choices? Was the information clear? Those are the questions Ghana should be asking.
QUESTION ONE: DID YOU REALLY UNDERSTAND THE EIGHT CHOICES?
This may be the most uncomfortable question for parents.
The current CSSPS guidance requires candidates to arrange eight choices in order of preference.
The official system allows up to two Category A choices, up to three Category B choices, and permits all eight choices to be Category C schools.
There are also limits on boarding selections within the categories. Parents and candidates are expected to check the school, programme, residence type and category for each choice before confirmation.
That is important. Because choosing eight schools does not mean choosing eight schools with identical chances of admission.
And it certainly does not mean that a child is guaranteed a place in any particular school simply because it appears on the list.
This is where parents must take some responsibility. Did you sit with your child and carefully examine the choices?
Did you look at the child’s performance and the competitiveness of the schools? Did you consider the programme being offered?
Did you consider whether the child could realistically travel to the school if placed as a day student? Did you include schools where the child had a genuine chance of securing a place?
Or did the list simply become a collection of the most famous names in Ghanaian secondary education?
PRESEC, Achimota, Wesley Girls, Mfantsipim, St Augustine’s and Opoku Ware.
One prestigious school after another. There is nothing wrong with ambition, but ambition without strategy can become disappointment.
A SCHOOL’S NAME IS NOT A CHILD’S DESTINY
We need to have a difficult conversation about Ghana’s obsession with Category A schools.
Some parents behave as though their child’s entire future depends on attending one of a handful of famous institutions. It does not.
A good school matters. Facilities matter. Teachers matter. Peer environment matters. Programmes matter.
But ultimately, the child matters most. A brilliant student can thrive in a Category B or Category C school.
A child can attend one of the country’s most prestigious schools and still struggle. Indeed, one of the most important questions a parent can ask is not, “Is this the most prestigious school?” but “Is this the school in which my child can learn, develop and thrive?”
That is a very different question.
QUESTION TWO: WHERE WERE WE AS PARENTS?
This is perhaps the hardest question of all. School selection is too important to be outsourced completely to a 14-year-old.
Yet some parents become deeply involved only after the placement result arrives.
Before that, the child may have been left to discuss choices with classmates, friends, or even teachers without meaningful parental oversight.
Then, months later, when the placement is announced, the parent arrives at GNAT Hall asking why the child did not get the desired school.
Parents must be involved before the choices are submitted, not only after the placement goes wrong.
The official CSSPS system itself provides a choice-confirmation stage where candidates can review their recorded choices and edit them before final confirmation.
It specifically advises users to check the school, programme, residence type and category before confirming. That opportunity should be treated seriously. Parents should sit down with their children. Check the codes, check the schools, check the programmes, check boarding or day status, check the order of preference, and then confirm.
BUT LET US NOT BLAME PARENTS FOR EVERYTHING
This is where the government and CSSPS must also accept responsibility. It is not enough to tell parents to “understand the system.”
A national education system must be designed so that ordinary parents can actually understand it.
The fact that parents are repeatedly arriving at resolution centres with similar questions should itself be treated as evidence that communication can be improved.
And the scenes at GNAT Hall are difficult to ignore.
Reports this week describe overcrowding, long queues, and parents waiting for hours, or returning repeatedly, to have their cases addressed. Some parents reportedly spent the night at the facility.
At one point, reports indicated that tensions became so high that a glass door at the GNAT Hall was damaged as parents attempted to enter the auditorium.
This is not how a modern education system should make parents feel. Parents should not have to sleep in a car park to get an answer about their child’s education.
THE RESOLUTION CENTRE CANNOT BECOME THE SYSTEM
The Resolution Centre is supposed to resolve exceptional problems. It cannot become the place where the entire placement system is effectively explained for the first time.
If thousands of parents have to physically converge on one location because they cannot obtain satisfactory answers elsewhere, then we should ask whether the architecture of the complaints system itself needs reform.
To its credit, the Ministry of Education has now announced plans to digitise the placement complaints process from 2027, allowing parents and candidates to submit and resolve complaints through the CSSPS portal.
That is a welcome direction, but digitisation alone will not solve everything.
A parent who cannot understand a complicated process on paper may not understand the same complicated process on a screen.
The reform must therefore combine technology with human support, clear communication and accountability.
AND THEN THERE IS THE POLITICS
This is where Ghana gets itself into trouble. The moment something goes wrong, we ask:
“Which party is responsible?”
But education should not be reduced to NDC versus NPP. The CSSPS has existed across different governments. Placement challenges have existed across different administrations.
Parents have complained about school choices, capacity, boarding and day arrangements, communication and resolution centres under different political parties.
If we change governments but continue to have the same structural problems, then perhaps the problem is bigger than partisan politics.
Political parties will come and go. Our children will not get another BECE because a politician made a mistake.
Their secondary-school years will happen once. That is why placement reform should be treated as a national education issue rather than a party weapon.
POLITICS CAN ALSO HIDE THE REAL PROBLEM
When every placement problem becomes a political argument, we stop discussing capacity.
We stop discussing why some schools are dramatically more attractive than others.
We stop discussing infrastructure.
We stop discussing teacher distribution. We stop discussing the quality of Category B and C schools. We stop asking why parents believe that only a small number of schools can provide their children with a successful future.
And, perhaps most importantly, we stop discussing how to make every good school a school parents are proud to choose.
That should be the national ambition.
Not simply to increase the number of children entering Category A schools, but to raise the quality and attractiveness of schools across the entire system.
WE ALSO NEED TO TALK ABOUT TRANSPARENCY
Parents have legitimate questions. Why was my child placed there? Why was the residential status changed? Why was my child’s choice not available?
Why did another candidate with apparently similar results receive a different placement?
These questions deserve clear answers.
The Ministry has explained that some requests cannot be accommodated where schools, particularly certain Category A and B institutions, have already reached capacity.
That is precisely why transparency matters. If a school is full, say so.
If a placement cannot be changed, explain why.
If the candidate must use self-placement, explain the available options. If a case requires national-level intervention, tell the parent exactly where to go.
The official CSSPS platform already provides a self-placement process for candidates who are not automatically placed, allowing them to select from schools with available vacancies.
The challenge is making sure parents understand these pathways before frustration turns into confrontation.
THE CHILD MUST NOT BECOME THE VICTIM
There is another dimension we often overlook. The child is listening. At home, the child hears: “The government has destroyed your future.”
At the resolution centre: “They have given you the wrong school.”
On social media: “The system is corrupt.” And in political arguments: “This is because of NDC.” Or: “This is because of NPP.”
What does that child hear? That their future has already been ruined.
We need to be careful. A placement disappointment should not become a psychological burden placed on a young person who has just completed basic education.
The message should instead be: “This is not the school we expected. Let’s understand what happened, examine our options and find the best path forward.”
That is what responsible parenting sounds like.
THE WAY FORWARD
The CSSPS is not perfect. Parents are not perfect. Schools are not perfect, and governments are not perfect.
But we can build a better system.
First, make the school-selection process radically clearer.
Parents should receive simple, practical explanations of what the eight choices mean, including the implications of category, programme, residence and capacity.
Second, make parental involvement part of the process. A parent should not first see the submitted choices after the results are released.
Third, publish clearer information on competitiveness, capacity and placement rules, while protecting the integrity of the system.
Fourth, strengthen schools outside the most competitive category. If parents are constantly fighting over a handful of schools, the long-term answer is not to magically create thousands of additional Category A places.
It is to make more schools genuinely excellent.
Fifth, reform the Resolution Centres. Regional centres should be properly staffed and equipped. Cases should be triaged. Simple issues should be resolved locally. Complex cases should be escalated.
Parents should be able to track their complaints without physically returning to a queue.
Sixth, complete the transition to a credible digital complaints system, but make sure it is accessible to parents who need human assistance.
The Ministry’s planned digital complaints platform from 2027 is a step in that direction.
And finally: Stop turning every national education problem into NDC versus NPP.
THE QUESTION WE SHOULD REALLY BE ASKING
A parent once put the issue to me in a way that stayed with me:
“I fought for Category A for my first child. He got it, but he struggled.
My second child went to a Category B school I had properly researched. Today, he is a prefect and thriving.” That should make us think.
Perhaps the greatest mistake we make is confusing prestige with potential. Our children do not need a political party blame-game to succeed.
They need parents who are involved, they need schools that are properly resourced, they need teachers who are supported, they need a placement system that is fair and transparent, and when something goes wrong, they need a Resolution Centre that treats them with self-possession.
So yes, let us demand accountability from government. Let us demand transparency from CSSPS.
Let us demand better facilities across our schools. Let us demand properly staffed and humane Resolution Centres. But let us also look in the mirror.
Did we understand the eight choices? Did we participate in the selection process?
Did we give our children realistic options? Did we consider the school, or only the name of the school?
And when the result disappointed us, did we seek a solution, or immediately seek a political enemy? Ghana’s children deserve better than that.
Their education is too important to become another battlefield for NDC and NPP.
Let us fix the system without destroying confidence in it.
Let us hold government accountable without surrendering parental responsibility. And above all, let us remember that the ultimate goal of school placement is not to produce the largest number of children in Category A schools.
It is to give every Ghanaian child a genuine opportunity to thrive.
