An investigative piece by The Fourth Estate, has led to the arrest of eight persons by the Police.
The ‘School Placement for Sale’ documentary found evidence of widespread fraud in the Computerized School Selection and Placement System (CSPSS).
The Fourth Estate is a public interest journalism project of the Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA).
The Editor-In-Chief of the Fourth Estate, Manasseh Azure Awuni, confirmed that the suspects have been charged and put before the court. According to him, two other suspects are at large.
Mr. Azure made this known in an interview with Joy News.
“The Police have taken whatever evidence that they need from us and we hope that as time goes on they may be able to reach out beyond these eight and get to whoever served as the link between the intermediaries and also the Ghana Education Service, Director General and the Ministry of Education because only the two people could have agreed to any placement made into a category A school.”
There have been widespread allegations that the CSSPS has been compromised. As a result, some placements reportedly happen based on illegal payments rather than merit.
In the investigative piece, The Fourth Estate’s Adwoa Adobea-Owusu and Evans Aziamor-Mensah reveal that protocol placements into category A schools were sold in 2022 even though approval for such placements was limited to only the Minister of Education and Director-General of the Ghana Education Service.
The documentary revealed that 10% of slots are usually reserved for protocol placements.
It further revealed that some parents paid up to 20,000 cedis to get their children enrolled in top-tier schools.
In some cases, people pay as much as 10,000 cedis to maintain a slot, according to the investigative documentary.
Some have argued that the practice has been in the system for a very long period of time, only that it is just now being revealed because the payments are becoming outrageous.
The CSSPS was introduced to eliminate corruption in the placement system. However, some private individuals and government officials have compromised the system.
Source – Tru News Report
