The Ghana Education Service (GES) has issued a warning to heads of Senior High Schools who charge first-year students unapproved fees.

It said such heads will be sanctioned because the acts are illegal and will not be tolerated.

Parents have complained about unapproved fees levied by school administrators and items not approved in the prospectus for new students.

Cassandra Twum Ampofo, Head of Public Relations at the Ghana Education Service, told journalists in Accra that school heads flouting regulations will face serious disciplinary action.

“We are cautioning the heads who are going contrary to what we have discussed. We’ve realized that some were adding A4 sheets, mosquito coils and all of that in the prospectus. For us, that was really worrying, so we had to caution them to let them know that, that wasn’t what we agreed on.”

First-year SHS students began reporting to school on Monday, February 27, 2023, following the release of the school placement for graduates of the 2022 Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) into SHSs and Technical, Vocational, Education and Training (TVET) schools across the country.

Out of the 547,329 candidates who sat for the examination, 538,399 qualified for school placement.

372,780 candidates were automatically placed into various schools.

However, 165,601 candidates had to do self-placement because they could not be matched to their school of choice.