This is worrying!

Education is the key to unlocking the human resource potential of a country. Through quality education a country is able to have qualitative human resource to accelerate its socio-economic development.
Many advanced nations could not have gotten where they are now if they had not placed emphasis on education. Examples of some of these countries are the United States of America, France and Britain. This explains why developing nations such as ours need to take education seriously.
However, Today is highly disquieted at reports that 51% of students, who registered and sat for the Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE), cannot be enrolled in Senior High Schools (SHS).
In an interview with Joy FM, former Coordinator of the Computerised School Placement System, Mr. Akuoko Andrews, explained that the students cannot gain admissions into SHS because of limited vacancies. Mr. Akuoko therefore advised parents to consider enrolling their children in informal educational institutions.
The placement computerized system, initiated by the Ghana Education Service (GES) in 2008, has come under a barrage of criticisms—especially from the general public. And, the situation becomes pretty nasty, anytime BECE results are released where parents and guardians become desperate to get admissions for their children.
The fact of the matter is that many parents do not have confidence in the placement system. They believe the system is corrupt and one which is characterised by favourtism. Though the Public Relations Officer of GES, Mr. Charles Parker Allotey, has come out to rebut these allegations, we on this paper think that it is not enough.
Indeed, GES must openly demonstrate that the system is fair and transparent and that the selection is purely done on merit. It is sometimes worrying when students with very good results cannot find their names on any of the lists of their three chosen schools.
Like a yearly ritual parents and guardians in this country have always had cause to complain anytime BECE results are released.
In addition, heads of senior high schools have also not been spared in the criticisms as they are also accused of giving preferential treatment to some students whose parents attended that very school.
It is obvious that parents are not too satisfied with the computerised placement system and have doubts about it. This therefore calls for the need for GES to do a lot more to convince Ghanaians that the system is a transparent one.