Former Education Minister Dr. Yaw Osei Adutwum has called for a more sustainable approach to Ghana’s Senior High School (SHS) placement system, arguing that the major challenge is not the computer software itself but the policies and institutional processes guiding its operation.
According to him, an effective placement system requires close collaboration between education policymakers and software developers, with continuous testing and improvements before the system goes live.
Dr. Adutwum said this approach was used between 2017 and 2024, during which several bottlenecks were identified and addressed through repeated testing, gender checks, cybersecurity assessments and parental verification.
He said the current challenges could be worsened when a new government replaces the developers and institutional knowledge is lost.
“When the new government comes and decides to go for a new group of developers, then they are starting from scratch.”
While acknowledging that computer systems can have glitches, Dr. Adutwum said the immediate priority should be to increase the capacity of the resolution centres to deal with affected parents and students.
He recommended doubling the number of personnel, providing more laptops and bringing additional ministry staff into the process.
He also proposed strengthening call centres so that some complaints could be resolved remotely, reducing pressure on physical resolution centres.
He recalled that during his tenure, trained call-centre personnel were able to resolve some issues while others were escalated to a technical team that worked overnight.
Dr. Adutwum also blamed Ghana’s political transition arrangements for the loss of institutional memory, saying incoming ministers often do not receive adequate briefings from their predecessors on critical policies and systems.
He called for a formal transition process that would allow outgoing and incoming ministers and their teams to discuss major programmes, including the SHS placement system.
He said relying solely on civil servants to provide continuity was not always enough because officials may be reluctant to speak openly to new political leadership.
The former minister also questioned the large number of students initially reported as “not qualified” for placement this year.
He noted that the figure had risen sharply compared with previous years, describing the initial 54,000-plus figure as a “shocker” before subsequent clarification that many of the students could still access placement through self-placement.
He defended self-placement, saying it was introduced to allow students who missed their preferred schools to select other schools with available vacancies.
On declining performance in some subjects, particularly English, Mathematics and Science, Dr. Adutwum urged education authorities to investigate the problem rather than rely on general explanations.
He proposed a nationwide audit of teacher assignments to determine whether unqualified or inexperienced teachers were being assigned to critical subjects.
He said some poorly performing schools he encountered had teachers teaching subjects they had not been trained to teach.
Dr. Adutwum argued that once misassignment is identified and addressed, authorities should analyse the specific areas in which students are struggling and provide targeted teacher training.
He also linked the intense competition for Category A schools to corruption and anxiety among parents.
According to him, Ghana needs to deliberately develop more high-performing schools instead of allowing a small number of institutions to attract overwhelming demand.
He cited school partnerships and the use of experienced headteachers and retired high-performing teachers as possible ways of improving weaker schools.
Dr. Adutwum opposed simply removing the categorisation of schools without providing parents with another transparent measure of school performance.
He suggested that if the Category A, B and C system is scrapped, schools should instead be ranked publicly.
“We have to rank schools. Be transparent.”
He argued that parents, as taxpayers, have a right to know how schools are performing and that transparent rankings could also put pressure on governments to improve underperforming institutions.
For Dr. Adutwum, the long-term solution lies not only in fixing the placement software but in ensuring policy continuity, strengthening institutions, improving schools across the country and taking politics out of educational performance.
By Evelyn Tengmaa
