Former Director-General of the Ghana Education Service (GES), Charles Aheto-Tsegah, has called for an honest and urgent confrontation of the “protocol” system, which he believes continues to undermine the fairness and credibility of the Computerised School Selection and Placement System (CSSPS).
Aheto-Tsegah stressed that the problem of protocol has grown worse over the years, distorting the placement process and creating confusion for students and parents alike.
“The protocol has actually been expanding, and that is what we have to deal with. If we want to be very fair and equitable, we need to kill that small elephant in the room called protocol,” he said on The Big Issue on Channel One TV.
He argued that the CSSPS, which was introduced to make school placements more transparent and merit-based, was fundamentally flawed from the very beginning because authorities failed to develop a clear strategy for managing protocol admissions.
“We didn’t even know how to manage protocol in the system, even though we knew that it was an ever-present issue in that process, so we could manage it and we have lived with that system right from the beginning,” he explained.
Describing the placement system as “dead on arrival,” Aheto-Tsegah maintained that its credibility was compromised from the start, and unless the issue of protocol is decisively addressed, the recurring confusion will persist.
