CSSPS Placement | Answers to frequently asked questions about computer placement

The CSSPS is a system used by the Ghana Education Service to place qualified Basic Education Certificate Examination candidates into Senior High School, Technical Institutes and Vocational Institutes.

Prospective Senior High School students who wrote the Basic Education Certificate Examination will now have to check their placement details right on their mobile phones instead of the traditional way of going to various schools to check their names.

The details can be checked via a text message. The Computerized School Selection and Placement System will allow the students to see the schools they have been admitted into and program offered.

Answers to frequently asked questions about computer placement

These twelve (12) frequently asked questions and answers are provided here to help teachers, parents/guardians and students to appreciate the placement system.

• I missed out on all my school choices. What do I do?

Candidates who miss out on all their choices after the automatic placement system is done, still have the opportunity to select schools with vacancies available through the Self-placement process described earlier.

• Can a candidate with good grades miss out on their first, second or all of their choices?

YES. All spaces in the schools are competitively filled taking into consideration the available spaces in the school (i.e.) Preferred residential status and programme of choice).

Hence, qualified candidates are ranked from the highest score to the lowest and it will cut off when the spaces are exhausted.

Those who did not get placements are then moved to their next school of choice to compete for space there, and the process continues further down the chain.

• Is it possible for someone with aggregate 7 not to get access into a particular school but someone with aggregate 10 can get into that same school?

YES. Programmes selected and residential status may differ from one candidate to the other. Therefore, the competition for slots may differ.

For instance, in most cases, the Science programme of study is highly competitive over other programmes, and so is a Boarding accommodation status over a Day Status.

• A candidate with Aggregate 10 got placed on a particular Programme and residential status and yet another with Aggregate 8 did not, even though they chose the same programme and residential statuses. How is this possible?

There is a protocol system of placement that allocates 5% of a school’s declared vacancies to the school for allocation to its stakeholders.

It is therefore possible for the ward of an alumni or a staff member of the school to get admission ahead of another child seeking admission to the same school.

Other stakeholders include the Missions and the Traditional Seats of the relevant school.

Talented candidates such as those good in Sports may also be considered by a school for some of its protocol slots.

Similarly, 30% of spaces in the country’s top 55 schools have been reserved for candidates from public Junior High Schools.

As such, candidates from Public Basic Schools across the country compete for the 30% of space. Hence, the competition for the 60% is different from the competition for the 30%.

• Is it possible for someone who did not choose a particular school to be placed into that school?

NO. It is not possible during the automatic placement process. However, a candidate can get placement into a school through ‘protocol’ placement procedures.

• Can a person change school after enrollment?

No. The Placement process ends once a candidate begins the admission process by going to the school to complete the relevant form(s).

Any movement from one school to another after enrollment is considered a transfer. A student can only transfer after one academic year.

• Can a student change their residential status or programme of study after placement?

NO. A candidate usually gets placed into a particular school based on their preferred programme and the residential status they chose.

A candidate competes for a slot in a particular school based on the preferences provided.

Therefore, neither the residential status nor the programme of study can be changed.

• Can I change a school I selected through self-placement?

YES. A candidate who got placed in a school through self-placement, can change the school on the portal so long as that candidate has not enrolled in a school.

• I selected and was placed in a school that was on my list of school choices. Can I change to another school?

NO. You cannot change to another school, if the school was one of the schools you chose.

• Can I be enrolled into a school when I or a representative of mine is not present?

NO. For enrollment to be successful, the school will need the student’s unique ID, address and details of their parents or guardians, and phone number.

Once a candidate or parent/guardian submits their forms to the school placed, the school uses the information provided on the forms to enroll the candidate.

Therefore, it is not possible for a school to get all such personal information of a candidate without the candidate or a representative being present in the school.

• I was enrolled in a school but my name can no longer be found on their system. What can be done?

If indeed a candidate was enrolled in a particular school but the details can no longer be found on the school’s system, the Head of the school will formally report to the appropriate office for redress.

The candidate should not be sent away from the school.

• The head of the school I want my child/ward to go to says there is space in the school. Can the child be placed there on this basis?

NO. Schools have established ways of communicating to authorities. Placement is done on the basis of the vacancies declared by the schools.

Once those vacancies have been filled by the CSSPS in that school, we are unable to do any further placements in the school.

Source: GESHub.org