This is contained in a testimony given by Prof. Kwasi Opoku-Amankwa, who was the  Director-General of the Ghana Education Service (GES) at the time of the placement and the Ministry of Education’s investigative committee’s sitting to probe alleged corruption in the school placement.

Prof Opoku-Amankwa was also one of only two persons with unfettered access to the computer system and could place or approve placement of students into category “A” Schools.

Access to protocol placement into the most prestigious senior high schools was limited to the Minister of Education and the Director General of the GES to curb the payment of money for placement into category “A” schools.

That restriction did not stop the acts of corruption in Ghana’s most sought-after schools, resulting in the setting up of a committee by the Ministry of Education. The committee was set up after the Ministry of National Security wrote to complain about allegations of corruption in the system.

The report of the six-member committee, which The Fourth Estate has exclusive access to, states: “He [Prof Opoku-Amankwa] sighted [sic] an example in one of the cases that was reported that an amount of GHS7000 had been charged to place someone at Wesley Girls or Achimota School. A probe using the log report on the system showed that it was done with the Hon. Minister’s access which was being handled by Ms Vera Amoah.”

The report adds: “Prof Amankwah went on to say that subsequently, his permission to the log port on the placement system was blocked and so could not trace and act on complaints that came in thereafter.”

The committee spoke to Dr Adutwum after taking Prof. Amankwa’s testimony, but the report does not state whether or not the minister denied the GES Director-General’s assertion that a fraudulent transaction was traced to his account.

When The Fourth Estate requested comment through the public relations officer of the Ministry of Education, the ministry declined to comment. It, however, said it would “study the investigative work, collaborate with relevant state institutions and address the issues raised accordingly.”

Prof. Opoku-Amankwa told The Fourth Estate that the system is designed such that he could see placements that were effected or approved by the Minister of Education and the Minister could also see what he did in the system. A week after the 2022 placement started, however, he said his access to the system was revoked without any explanation to him.

The technical consultant of the school placement system told the committee that the decision on who should be granted access to protocol placement on the computerised system was communicated to him in a memo.

“The consultant receives instruction in the form of a memo generated by the Free SHS Coordinator and signed by the Hon. Minister to assign protocol access to some identified officers,” the report states.

However, it emerged that the Minister of Education later initiated some changes and instructions which were not documented.

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An Assistant Research Officer in charge of procurement at the Free SHS Secretariat, Mohammed Kamel Issa, was given access to the category C schools to help resolve some of the placement issues. But two weeks after the placement process, Kamal’s access was blocked.

“The coordinator later informed him that the Hon. Minister had requested to meet him in his office at the Ministry. According to Kamel, he sought to find out from his supervisors the purpose of the intended meeting with the Hon. Minister as well as the reasons for the revocation of his access but he did not get any response from them.

“The meeting with the Hon. Minister, however, did not come on because the Free SHS Coordinator later came to inform him that the Minister did not need him again,” the report stated.

A coordinator for the CSSPS centre, Mark Sosu Mensah, explained to the committee that the students were placed into schools categorised into A, A1, B, B1 and C. He told the committee, “he was initially given access to category “B1 and was later upgraded to category B schools. His access was communicated to him verbally by the Free SHS Coordinator. According to him, it was only in 2017 that his access was officially communicated to him in writing by the Hon. Minister.”

There were also other issues of corruption that the investigative committee discovered during the interrogation. A member of the Operations team at the Free SHS secretariat, Bright Appiah Kubi, “told the committee that he got a report that a parent paid GHS20,000 for the ward to be placed in Wesley Girls to read science but because he did not have access to the log report on the system, he could not check who did that placement.”

Mr. Appiah said in the past, such as in the 2019 placement, he could log in and verify who did the placement that was paid for.

Before the Ministry of Education set up its investigative committee, Prof Opoku- Amankwa had written to the National Intelligence Bureau (NIB) and the Criminal Investigations Department (CID) of the Ghana Police Service to investigate allegations of corruption in the placement of students into secondary schools.

The Fourth Estate understands that, following Prof. Opoku-Amankwa’s request, the NIB initially agreed and started the investigation, but exactly one month later, it wrote to the GES Director General, asking him to redirect his request to the CID.

The Fourth Estate sources say these investigations were stopped by “powers from above.” Prof. Opoku-Amankwa could not pursue this matter to the end. He was removed from office later that year.

He recently emphasised this in an interview with The Fourth Estate when he said: “If there is fraud in the matter, then I, as the Director-General, and the minister should take responsibility. I fully accept and agree, but I knew that I was part of it and I wanted to actually make sure that there were no challenges with it.”

Even while in office, Prof Opoku-Amankwa told the GES Committee that he could not “fully absolve himself from any issues of corruption because he delegated his access to one of his officers to do the work for him.

He, however, went on to say that one good thing about the system is that anytime someone logs in with his credentials, he gets a notification alert to enable him to inquire into what was being done.”

Although the security agencies and the Ministry of Education’s committee did not uncover those behind the alleged fraudulent payments and placements, undercover investigations by The Fourth Estate revealed that a network of people charged money and placed students into category “A” and the most sought-after category “B” senior high schools in the country.

The Fourth Estate worked and then liaised with the police to arrest eight persons who are standing trial. None of them works at the Ministry of Education, Ghana Education Service, CSSPS Secretariat or the Free SHS Secretariat.

The Fourth Estate also found that protocol placement into the category “A” schools after payments were done could only be approved by the Minister of Education and the Director General of the GES.

It has taken my mind back to how it all started.

I do so clearly remember the day we decided that something had to be done about the secondary school admission system.

It wasn’t the day a colonel of the Ghana Armed Forces broke down in tears in my office because, after three days of trying everything he could, he was going home to face his daughter and his wife with the news that his daughter could not get a place at Wesley Girls High School. She had aggregate seven.

It wasn’t the day a taxi driver came to my office to tell me about his dream of getting his daughter into Achimota School. He was convinced that to be able to make a headway in any sphere of life in Ghana, you must be an old student of Achimota School.

He said: “As soon as my daughter was born, I made up my mind that when, one day, she walks into a room to be interviewed for a job, she will have a head start, because she would be an old Achimotan and as we all know, on every interviewing panel in this country, there is always an old Achimotan and my daughter, as someone who would have been to Achimota School, will get the job”.

He said he had saved money and he would “borrow more to pay all of you” and told me if he needed to commit murder to get his daughter into Achimota, he would.

Stories

These stories and many more were some of the harrowing experiences that the late Kwadwo Baah Wiredu as Minister and I as Minister of State walked into when President J.A. Kufuor sent us to the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports in early 2003.

They were not new stories but things were obviously getting out of hand when some survey, I don’t remember if it was an Afrobarometer survey, put the Ghana Education Service, GES, as the second most corrupt entity in the public perception, coming after the police.

We decided it was intolerable that the people who were in charge of running the country’s schools should have such a reputation.

Once we started looking, it did not take much to work out the source of the problem as the process of admission to secondary schools. One headmistress, we were told, specialised in VCRs, video cassette recorders, because that was what people gave her to get their children admitted into her school.

There was the famous school whose old students routinely bought an airline ticket for their headmistress, so she would travel out of the country during the admission session and avoid the stress of dealing with the public.

The situation was intolerable and something had to be done. Meetings and consultations started about how to find equitable mode of admissions.

There were many interested parties, the old students and traditional leaders being the most vociferous and most demanding. Hearing some of them, it appeared the entry into the circle of old students would end with them and unless a child could claim a great grand parent as an old student, he could not hope to enter any of the famous schools.

While the meetings were going on, the computer selection system was being developed and we were all agreed the best chance of success was to remove as much of the human interface as possible. I know, it sounds like Dr Bawumia explaining how to make ports and customs work and eliminate corruption.

We were very much aware that introducing a computer placement system for school admissions would be dramatic and a shock to the system and never forgot that we were dealing with human beings, but we were convinced that the new system would deal fairly with the majority of people.

Meeting

I remember the meeting in M Plaza Hotel in Accra at which it was finally decided to take the plunge. The Prempeh College headmaster spoke and we decided if he, who was one of those at the cutting edge of the admission pressures was ready to accept the new system, there was no reason to keep hesitating.

It had taken almost three years of planning and consulting. J. A. Kufuor was now in his second term, Kwadwo Baah-Wiredu had changed places with Yaw Osafo-Maafo and was now at Finance and Yaw Osafo-Maafo was at Education.

We were lucky in the man we got as the Coordinator of the CSSPS (Computerised School Selection and Placement System), the late, Mr A. A. Akuoku, I think he was a former headmaster of PRESEC. He knew his stuff.

Apart from knowing his stuff, Mr Akuoku exuded integrity and you just knew you could go to bed and feel safe with things under his control.

When the system came into operation in 2005, you could say we had a case of true transformation.

Drivers (my driver among them), cleaners, watchmen rushed to the ministry to find out if indeed their children had been placed in Mfantsipim or St Peter’s or Holy Child. Surely only children of big people went to such schools.

Not everyone was happy or pleased with the CSSPS, some people found it offensive that a computer would make placements without any consideration to personalities. Big chiefs and political office holders saw a hitherto source of power disappear overnight.

But the more protests we got from the big people, the more satisfaction we got from the unbounded joy of people like the woman who sold, and I think, lived in a kiosk in the Ministries area whose daughter was placed in Aburi. I will never forget the hug she gave us in the office.

Within two years, GES had disappeared from the list of corrupt institutions in surveys. Therefore, one could say the reason for starting the computer school placement system had been achieved.

Top

Dare I say that the most persistent people who have tried to bastardise the computer placement system have been members of the top echelons of our society, big people, professors, the type of people who complain about corruption and things not working in the country.

They seem to think their children MUST attend these so-called grade A schools. They are not interested in the upgrading of more schools to expand the pool of Grade A schools. And yet, that is the only way. We can gradually create more grade A schools. Mamfe Wesley Girls is today a leading school, especially for Science. Back in 2005, it wasn’t a sought-after school, today it is.

Who knows, in a few years’ time, the addition of a science lab, a few teachers’ bungalows will transform Abutia SecTech into a grade A school.

But please don’t let us push GES back onto the corruption league. Some things must be sacred.