The Minister for Education has announced, that the 2026 BECE candidates will now select their preferred Senior High School only after their results have been released by WAEC.
Speaking at a news conference on Wednesday, April 1, the Minister noted that BECE candidates will be given a one-week window after the release of the results to select their schools.
"In the past, students selected schools without knowing their aggregate, and that affected the placement system. This time, we will provide a mandatory period of one week after the results are declared for students to confirm their choices, based on their performances" he said.
The Minister was confident that this new arrangement will enhance fairness, minimize placement challenges and improve efficiency in the admission process.
The 2026 BECE candidates school selection moved to after WAEC releases the BECE results was first suggested by the Africa Education Watch led by Kofi Asare in 2024. While the government’s move has been welcomed by many stakeholders in education, the minister did not give further details on the modalities the school selection will take and whether a cut off point will be introduced.
The introduction of official cut-off grades and raw scores for each category of school and programmes offered in second cycle schools will help students and parents make the choices that march their grades.
The new school selection system is expected to help students choose schools based on their performance. A post BECE result school selection system will help deal with issues of self-placement and students missing all schools selected as it was under the system used in the last eight years.
In a related development, the Minister, speaking on the Super Morning Show on Joy fm, government needed to overhaul the comprehensive school placement system to make it fair, transparent and predictable.
He noted that in the past, students chose schools that were not consistent with their performance.
In a related development, the Minister, who doubles as the Member of Parliament for Tamale South Constituency also revealed students who leap to take the BECE earlier, while in JHS 1 or 2 is unacceptable even per the WAEC guidelines and GES guidelines and that contributes to poor quality in the second cycle institutions. He therefore announced that, that practice will no longer be tolerated.
The Minister was of the view that such students are not up to the task but force themselves to write the BECE and this reflects in the poor BECE results often recorded.
Opinions, are however divided as to the impact this new policy is going to have on students going forward. Will others see the move as a necessary one to tackle the uncertainty of candidates who write the BECE and make them make informed choices based on their results, others see it to be one that will likely impact the candidate’s negativity. They argue, that students selecting their choice of schools serves as an extra motivation for the candidates to study hard and excel.
The move to ensure 2026 BECE school selection is done after the release of the results by WAEC will go a long way to deal with many of the bottlenecks that were associated with the old system such as over subscription or selection of Category A schools as well as the issues of non-placement, self-placement among others.
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