The new academic calendar for SHS one students indicates that freshers are expected in school on February 20, which is 7 days away.

Parents have raised concerns about their wards not yet giving placements with just a week to the reopening date.

The Computerized School Selection and Placement System which was introduced by the GES seeks to place qualified BECE graduates into second-cycle institutions.

Reacting to the concerns raised, the PRO for the Ghana Education Service, Cassandra Twum-Ampofo asked stakeholders particularly parents to remain calm as plans are underway to release the school placements soon.

“We are preparing so hard to ensure the release of the placements and just this weekend, we had a training for our call centre agents so that they can attend to issues having to do with parents with challenges.

“We continue to caution parents and guardians not to pay money to anyone to have their children placed in any school.”

She also admonished parents and guardians alike “not to pay money to anyone to have your ward’s school changed, we have good teachers in our schools.”

Mrs. Twum-Ampofo further blamed some of the delays in the reporting date for freshers on the disruption in the academic calendar brought up by COVID-19.

She said a meeting with various stakeholders indicate “we needed to go back to our previous calendar which used to begin in September, and so we had some back and forth on that, and we agreed to go back, and we needed to reduce the contact period so that we will be able to move back to the September to July calendar before COVID-19 set in.”