Joseph Azumah, a member of Parliament for Akrofuom, has said parents are being charged GH¢30,000 for placement into Ghana’s Senior High School (SHS).
According to him, a parent came to him for help and later returned with evidence showing the level of corruption in Ghana’s SHS placement.
He revealed the parent came back with evidence showing payment of GH¢30,000 to secure the placement.
Speaking in an interview on Asempa FM, Joseph Azumah cried out, “Someone who knew I was an MP came to me at Community 16, where I live and asked me to help their child gain admission to a certain school.
“Within a week, the person came back with evidence showing that they had paid GH¢30,000 to secure the placement. Why are we doing this to ourselves?”
The MP said he was shocked by the revelation and questioned why some parents were willing to pay exorbitantly. “I asked the person, so if your child goes to this school, will they automatically become an MP or a president? Why sacrifice so much for that?”
“This is the kind of country we live in. It shows how deep the problem has become,” he added.
Joseph Azumah further called for a tighter supervision of the SHS placement process to curb corruption, proposing that District Chief Executives (DCEs), Municipal Chief Executives (MCEs), and Metropolitan Chief Executives be allowed to delegate representatives to serve on monitoring committees to ensure transparency.
“I’m not saying they should interfere, but for supervision and monitoring, DCEs, MCEs and KMA bosses should be allowed to delegate representatives on the placement board,” he proposed.
“Some of the things we claim are small are the same things that destroy governments,” he cautioned.
Meanwhile, Dr Belinda Glover, the National Coordinator of the Free SHS Secretariat, has announced that two individuals have been apprehended for reportedly offering bribes and attempting to influence the placement of their children in schools.
She warned that anyone attempting to tamper with the placement system will be identified and turned over to the authorities.
Speaking to the media, Dr Belinda Glover stated, “We have been able to arrest some of them, in fact, they come with multiple sheets, trying to do changes either day to boarding. Sometimes change in the program.
We have been able to track down those people, and have some of them to the police to deal with them”.
She added, “You can come here with more than two sheets; anything beyond that means you are here to do business with us, and we are not going to allow that. So far, we have handed two people over to the Police”.
“Some of them come here with five or more placement sheets. Beyond 2, you are in for business because you can’t tell me you have five children all entering senior high school at the same time. Even with that, we followed up on some of these cases and found that they collect money from people and come here pretending to be parents. Once we detect that, we involve the police”, she added.
Also, Charles Aheto-Tsegah, a former Director-General of the Ghana Education Service (GES), has said the persistent national crisis surrounding the Computerised School Selection and Placement System (CSSPS) is due to a small elephant called protocol.
According to Charles Aheto-Tsegah, protocols have deeply undermined the supposedly merit-based electronic placement system.
The former GES boss emphasised that the system’s architects failed to account for deeply fixed patronage within the education system.
Charles Aheto-Tsegah noted that the protocols have increased in scope and impact.
He cited that previous years’ SHS data placement shows discrepancies between the number of available slots and the final admitted students.
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NDC Member of Parliament for Akrofuom accuses the education ministry for engaging in corruption, according to him, they take Ghc30,000 before they place students to their preferred School on their system. pic.twitter.com/gveH3hKQx7