The Ministry of Education has extended the 2026 Senior High School placement exercise by one week to give thousands of students with outstanding placement issues additional time to secure schools before the September 18 reopening date.
The extension, announced on September 13, will allow students undertaking self-placement or seeking changes to their residential status to complete the process. Resolution centres across the country will remain open from Monday to Friday to address outstanding cases .
Significant Progress but Thousands Still Unplaced
Press Secretary to the Education Minister, Hashmin Mohammed, told JoyNews that significant progress had been made in resolving the challenges facing candidates .
“Out of the 53,887 category of self-placement students, we have had 33,726 who have been able to self-place themselves into various schools and out of 9,948 reported cases at the resolution centres throughout the country, the CSSPS Secretariat has been able to resolve 4,531 so far,” he said.
This leaves approximately 20,000 self-placement students still seeking schools and over 5,400 unresolved cases at resolution centres nationwide. Mr Mohammed expressed optimism that the numbers would decline substantially before students report to school.
“The resolution centres will remain active from Monday till Friday and we are hoping that by Friday, the numbers should be able to go down because on September 18, they will report to school,” he added .
Background: 2026 Placement Challenges Rooted in Demand Mismatch
The extension follows a turbulent placement season that has exposed structural challenges within the Computerised School Selection and Placement System (CSSPS). The 2026 results, released on September 4, placed 527,932 candidates—approximately 87.3 per cent of the 604,567 qualified candidates—into Senior High Schools, Senior High Technical Schools, and Technical and Vocational Education and Training institutions .
However, 76,635 qualified candidates were not automatically placed. The Ministry of Education attributed the shortfall not to a shortage of spaces—a total of 859,828 vacancies were declared nationwide—but to a mismatch between student preferences and available capacity .
A total of 313,283 candidates selected Category A schools as their first choice, competing for just 76,417 declared vacancies in those institutions. In contrast, Category B schools had 250,366 vacancies while Category C schools had 468,652 .
“The system declared a vacancy of 859,828. So if you look at the vacancy in the system, it is even far more than the number of candidates who sat for the exams,” Mr Mohammed said. “But the challenge is that many candidates concentrated their first-choice selections on highly subscribed Category A schools” .
Thousands of Candidates Excluded from Automatic Placement
The Ministry of Education confirmed that 57,259 candidates did not meet the requirements for automatic placement. This figure includes 35,382 candidates who obtained a score of 9 in either English Language or Mathematics, 18,505 who scored 9 in both subjects, and 3,372 who did not sit the examination at all .
Candidates who scored 9 in either English or Mathematics were granted access to the self-placement portal to select from schools and programmes with available vacancies. The 3,372 candidates whose results were unavailable will be given an opportunity to resit the examination before progressing along an appropriate educational pathway .
Deputy Minister of Education Dr Clement Apaak urged affected candidates and parents not to lose hope, encouraging them to take advantage of the self-placement opportunity and consider the full range of available schools and programmes, including 85 private Senior High Schools participating in the Free SHS programme for the 2026/2027 academic year .
Resolution Centres Under Pressure
The National Placement Resolution Centre at GNAT Hall in Accra has witnessed large numbers of parents and candidates seeking assistance, with reports describing long queues, hours of waiting, and growing frustration .
Parents have called for additional resolution centres and more personnel to reduce congestion at the facility. The Ministry established regional placement resolution centres to address concerns closer to affected families, advising candidates and parents to first seek assistance from Ghana Education Service or Ghana TVET Service offices in their respective regions before escalating cases to Accra .
Dedicated call-centre lines have also been activated: 055 037 7388, 059 952 5926 and 059 844 5898 .
Policy Shift Introduced for 2026
This year’s placement exercise operated under a significant policy change. In April 2026, Education Minister Haruna Iddrisu announced that BECE candidates would select their preferred Senior High Schools only after their examination results were released, rather than before the exams .
“In the past, students selected schools without knowing their aggregate, and that affected the placement system. This time, we will provide a mandatory period of one week after results are declared for students to confirm their choices based on their performance,” the Minister stated .
The shift was intended to reduce mismatched placements by allowing students to make better-informed decisions based on their actual performance.
Calls for Structural Reform
The recurring challenges have prompted calls for deeper reforms. The Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT) has proposed the establishment of well-resourced model Senior High Schools in each of Ghana’s 16 regions to reduce intense competition for a handful of traditionally preferred institutions .
GNAT General Secretary Thomas Musah argued that creating competitive schools across the regions would distribute demand more evenly and ease pressure on the placement system.
“If all schools are doing well, I don’t think that somebody from the Upper East Region will be so anxious to run to Cape Coast for Wesley Girls, or Holy Child, or to Ashanti Region for Prempeh,” he said .
The proposal echoes earlier discussions following the 2019 placement challenges, when a plan was mooted to establish model schools across the then 10 regions with adequate resourcing to accommodate thousands of students .
Looking Ahead
With the September 18 reopening deadline approaching, the Ministry of Education is racing to resolve outstanding cases. The extension provides a critical window for the approximately 20,000 self-placement candidates still seeking schools and the thousands awaiting resolution of reported cases.
For families across Ghana, the coming week will determine not only where their children will attend school but whether they will secure placement at all before the academic year begins.
