Morning Starr host Isaac Addae has criticised Ghana’s senior high school placement system, arguing that concentrating the country’s best-performing students in Category A schools is contributing to the persistent challenges surrounding school selection and placement.
He said the practice of sending the highest-performing students to schools perceived to be in the top category, while average-performing students are distributed among other schools, has created an artificial hierarchy within the senior high school system.
According to him, the concentration of high-performing students in schools such as Presbyterian Boys’ Secondary School, St. Louis Senior High School and other highly sought-after institutions partly explains their dominance in academic competitions such as the National Science and Maths Quiz.
Mr Addae was speaking on the ongoing debate over the categorisation of senior high schools into Categories A, B, C and D.
He argued that students of different academic abilities should instead be distributed across schools to create a more balanced system.
“If you have the best students going to Category A schools, and the average, less average students going to the other schools, unfortunately, you create this perception that some schools are better than others,” he said.
Mr Addae suggested that if schools had a mix of high-performing and average-performing students, the current perception of Category A schools as the preferred institutions would gradually disappear.
He cited schools such as Presbyterian Boys’ Secondary School and Presby Senior High School, Osu, as examples of how a more balanced distribution of students could help change public perceptions about school categories.
“You have some of your best students there, some of your average students there. You see the balance? It would be fantastic. It would not be termed as Grade A school; it would be termed as senior high school,” he said.
He maintained that every public senior high school should be given the necessary resources and equipped with competent teachers to provide students with comparable educational opportunities, regardless of their location or current category.
“Why? The teachers who teach in Presec, are they different from those who teach in the perceived less whatever schools? Are they not the same teachers? Are they not all public schools? Don’t they all have the same resources?” he asked.
Mr Addae said the focus of the education system should therefore shift from categorising schools based on perceived academic prestige to ensuring that all schools have adequate resources, qualified teachers and comparable standards.
He argued that such a system would also reduce the pressure on families and students to travel from different parts of the country to secure places in a few highly sought-after schools.
He said a student in Tamale, for instance, should be able to attend a well-resourced senior high school in the Northern Region without feeling compelled to seek admission to a Category A school in the southern part of the country.
Mr Addae believes spreading high-performing students across schools, while ensuring equal access to resources and quality teaching, could help eliminate the perception that some senior high schools are inherently superior to others.
He argued that such reforms could ultimately reduce the intense competition for a limited number of places in Category A schools and help address recurring concerns over the senior high school placement system.
Source: Starrfm.com.gh
