<<Print>>

Chairman of Parliament’s Education Committee, William Quaitoo is disputing allegations that a mass transfer of staff at the Secretariate of the Computerised School Selection and Placement System (CSSPS) is partly to blame for problems with the placement of students into Senior High Schools.

The allegations were made by a former Coordinator of the CSSPS, Dr. George Atta-Boateng who said skilled personnel trained over the last 13 years had been cleared out of the secretariat.

But Mr. Quaitoo refuted such claims saying: “it is not true that people were sacked. How can you sack people when they are supposed to do specific jobs when you know they have the specific skills to do that. We can’t do that. It is not possible.”

“I know the coordinator, he is called Mr. Darkwah. He is still there. He is the one that I have been sending messages to and when I send, I see him receive it,” he added.

When asked about possible intervention from Parliament, Mr. Quaitoo, explained that his committee could not initiate any proper intervention due to institutional constraints.

“We are on recess. If the committee will meet, the committee will meet at a cost. Who bears the cost? It is Parliament and when no official complaint has been made to Parliament, I cannot call my members to come for such a meeting.”

Other challenges

The former coordinator, Dr. George Atta-Boateng in an interview on Eyewitness News said the absence of a technical working committee, a supervisory body for the placement centre, which has been dissolved since 2017, contributed to the challenges.

He also said the introduction of new software to manage the placement was needless.

“If we are seeing all these problems, would you call it [the new software] a solution?” he argued, adding that clarity was needed on the reason for the changes.

“It is all about decision making, I am not saying I am against the change of the software. Probably they had reasons. They need to give us technical reasons because the old software was working [perfectly].”