The documentary is called “School Placement for Sale” revealed how parents and guardians of students paid huge sums of money to officials in charge of CSSPS to have their wards placed in their favorite grade A schools.
These fraudulent activities do not give the opportunity to qualified and eligible students to enter the school, while others who are not eligible are admitted.
“I just want to say up front that I appreciate the fact that the organization took the time to help make my work better,” Dr. Adutwum spoke in an interview on GTV’s Morning Show on Monday in reaction to the exposure.
He promised to use all means to eradicate the canker, saying it was endangering the education system.
“If this happens, there is a cartel. This must be stopped and I will work with the security agencies to ensure that this does not happen to me as the Minister of Education. Free SHS is not for sale, so if anyone thinks they can cheat the system and do things that are not demand, so it must be stopped.
It emerged after the undercover work of The Fourth Estate’s Adwoa Adobea-Owusu and Evans Aziamor-Mensah that the CSPSS is riddled with bribery and corruption rather than being run on merit.
Placements to category A schools, according to the exposition, are for sale in 2022 although approval for the placement is limited to the Minister of Education and the Director General of the Ghana Education Service.
The documentary revealed that 10% of the slots are usually reserved for protocol placement.
Further investigation revealed that some parents pay up to 20,000 cedis to get their children admitted to the upper level of high school, while some people pay as much as 10,000 cedis to keep a slot.
CSSPS was introduced to eliminate corruption in the placement system, but some private individuals and government officials have conspired to undermine the system.
Meanwhile, the past Director General of GES, Professor Kwasi Opoku Amankwah has accepted responsibility for the rot, saying he and the Minister of Education, Dr Yaw Adutwum must be held accountable.