Guide: How to Select The Right Public Senior High School for Free SHS

How to select the right public Senior High Schools for Free SHS in Ghana is becoming complicated and tricky. A lot of dynamics play out in getting a BECE graduate placed. The Basic Education Certificate Examination – BECE 2020 will commence on Monday. 14th September and end on Friday 18th September across the country. Candidates with the help of the teachers, school authorities, and parents/Guardians are to help choose public Senior High Schools for Free SHS.

The choices they make will determine the school that a child is placed in when the West African Examination Council releases their result. Very often, the wrong choices are made for candidates by parents who use their taste and preferences to choose schools for candidates.

Every candidate is unique and has his or her level of academic performance level. Very often, parents want their wards to attend the “Big” Schools” when their wards may not be cut out for such schools.

Several factors must be considered before choosing schools for candidates.

Academic performance

The academic performance of a candidate is one of the best measures that inform the school to choose for a BECE candidate.

This can be determined by parents discussing the performance of their wards with the teachers. Sincere comments about teachers can tell whether you should consider a particular school. If a teacher tells a parent that, the child is an above-average student, it can mean, such a candidate will best fit into category B schools and not the well-endowed schools like Pressec Boys.

Another way to tell the academic performance of a child is by looking at his or her terminal academic report. The raw scores and the aggregates of Mathematics, Integrated Science, English and Social Studies plus any other best two indicates the performance of a candidate.

For example, if the raw score is between 250 and 300, the best category to start choosing schools in category C. Raw scores are the actual scores or marks you obtained in each of the subjected. Eg. Math -65, this 65 is the raw score while grade 2 or 3 is the grade for corresponding to the range of scores that give the grade.

Should a candidate choose a school that is very competitive but he or she does not perform well; there is a high probability that, he or she may not gain admission to such a school.

Good grades make placement easy for candidates and save parents from stress.

Number of Courses – Senior High Schools

The number of courses offered in a Senior High School can increase or decrease the chances of your ward gaining admission. T.I Ahmadiyya SHS in Kumasi offered 6 programs in 2018. This school is likely to admit more candidates than a school that offers just two subjects. The same can said of schools that have both boarding and day accommodation.

Senior High Schools- Day School instead of Boarding

In 2018, many candidates who chose well-resourced schools and choose a day as the accommodation type gains admission. Hence people with aggregate 40 managed to be placed in PRESEC Legon. Choosing a highly-rated school or a good school as a day student increases your chance of being placed in the school.

It is, therefore, more likely that any candidate who chooses day schools only will easily get placed than the one who chooses to attend school as a boarding student.

What you must know before you select a school

1. To select a school from a given category, one must flip through the list of schools to identify a particular school one intends to attend. Move through the columns from left to right to identify the location, the programs, and the type of accommodation available. Accommodation is usually a day, boarding, or hostel.  Check if the school is a mixed-sex school or a single-sex school. Note that, you are to make five choices in all per the 2018 registration procedures which might not change in 2019.
2. Each time you choose a school, you must choose the programme (code) and the accommodation preference. Candidates are allowed to choose just one school from the well-endowed schools which is usually the category A Senior High Schools, however, are is not compulsory to make a choice from these schools which are competitive.
3. The next set of schools –Category B are also good schools but are placed here because they do not have all the needed facilities. Candidates must choose not more than 2 schools from these categories.
4. Candidates may choose as many schools from category C as may be allowed by the system but every candidate must choose at least one school from category D which are day schools in every region.

By NewsGhana24.com