Education Minister Warns SHS Heads Against CSSPS Bypass
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Education Minister Warns SHS Heads Against Off-System CSSPS Admissions
Ghana’s Education Minister, Haruna Iddrisu, is sending a firm message to school heads: stick to the official placement system, or face the consequences.
In a directive issued to heads of Senior High Schools (SHS), Senior High Technical Schools (SHTS), and Technical and Vocational Institutes (TVIs), Iddrisu made clear that admitting students outside the Computerised School Selection and Placement System (CSSPS) will no longer be tolerated. Any head found doing so manually, or bypassing the approved process altogether, will face sanctions once enrolment figures are validated.
The instruction came through a circular sent via the Directors-General of both the Ghana Education Service (GES) and the Ghana TVET Service on Sunday, September 7, 2026.
According to Iddrisu, this move ties directly into government’s broader push to improve access to secondary education and protect the integrity of how students are placed and enrolled in second-cycle schools. It also plays into the goals of the World Bank-funded Secondary Education Transformation for Access, Relevance and Results for Jobs Project (STARR-J), which is working to expand and improve teaching and learning infrastructure across the country.
The directive didn’t come out of nowhere. Iddrisu explained that the Ministry has noticed real discrepancies between the number of students officially placed through CSSPS and the number actually showing up enrolled a gap that became especially noticeable in 2025.
His explanation for the mismatch was direct: some school heads have been admitting students outside the approved system, often after quietly under-declaring how many vacancies they actually had.
He didn’t downplay the consequences either. According to Iddrisu, this practice chips away at the integrity of the placement process, creates messy data inconsistencies, throws off enrolment planning, and even distorts budget projections with real knock-on effects for how quickly funds reach schools.
To close these gaps, this year’s CSSPS placement cycle comes with a built-in enrolment component, effectively creating an end-to-end system that tracks both placement and actual enrolment together.
The directive spelled out exactly how strict the new rule will be: Accordingly, once vacancies are declared, validated, and confirmed on the system, there shall be no further expansion of vacancies. The exact number of students placed through the CSSPS shall constitute the approved enrolment for each school. No school head is permitted to admit any student outside the CSSPS.
It also made the consequences unambiguous: Any head of school found to have admitted students outside the CSSPS, upon confirmation through enrolment data validation, shall be sanctioned in accordance with the applicable regulations and the Code of Ethics.
The 2026 SHS placement itself was released on Friday, September 4, covering 620,141 BECE candidates who sat the exam between May 4 and May 11, 2026.
This year’s process came with a notable change toocandidates saw their BECE results before choosing schools, and were required to select two Category ‘A’ schools, one boarding and one day school, both within their own district.
