The Ghana Education Service (GES) has released the first ever new, less expensive, and harmonised national prospectus for SHS freshers. What this means is that 2023 BECE graduates who will report to school on December 4th will not have school-specific prospectors flooded with “irrelevant items,” and students will not be required to provide so many items.
The nww less expensive and harmonised National Prospectus for SHS freshers will eliminate all the ambiguity that has characterised the school-specific Prospectus for SHS freshers and also deal with the controversy and public outcry each time schools release their internally generated prospectus for SHS1 students enrolled.
With the new harmonised National Prospectus for SHS freshers, the GES demands all schools follow the content of the national prospectus and not impose any additional items. Schools cannot add any item to the list provided by the GES.
With the new prosepctus, parents can start shopping for the items in anticipation of the release of school placements or do their window shopping to be able to estimate ahead of time how much it will cost them to buy if their wards are enrolled in a boarding school upon the release of the school placement.
“Parents will no longer have to wait until the rollout of the Computerised School Selection and Placement System (CSSPS) before shopping for their children,” according to the GES.
The items students must provide as part of their enrolment in a particular Free SHS have also been divided into basic needs and cleaning materials for clarity and simplicity.
Categorisation
Category ‘A’ covers basic items:
- Hard-body suitcase or trunk, chop box, or hard plastic container
- Toiletries
- Beddings
- A pair of footwear (school-specific)
- Underwears
- Cutlery
- Other educational materials, such as a mathematical set and a scientific calculator, among others,
Second category
- Detergents
- Sanitary and cleaning materials such as liquid soap, hand gloves, washing powder, bleach, and
- Cleaning materials such as brooms, a standing mob, a mob bucket, and a scrubbing brush
In an interview with the Daily Graphic, the Director-General of the GES, Dr. Eric Nkansah, disclosed that the decision to introduce the harmonised National Prospectus for SHS freshers is to help parents get these items even before the GES releases the Computerised School Selection and Placement System (CSSPS).
According to Dr. Nkansah, the purpose of the harmonised prospectus was to remove features that schools could do without and to make sure that they weren’t included in the first place, which prevented schools from using them as a roadblock to timely student enrollment.
As a result of “reducing the list to the barest minimum,” the Director-General also recommended schools not admit kids based on their capacity to obtain all of the things. Instead, he urged parents to attempt to obtain the items as listed in the prospectus.
He was certain that the days of parents spending a fortune on prospectuses were over and that the cost of the goods in the prospectus was affordable for all parents.
Over time, parents had to wait until they were placed before going to the school to pick up the prospectus and make the purchases, according to Dr. Nkansah’s observations.
He noted that in the past, certain institutions had strict policies regarding prospectuses, stating that a student would not be admitted unless the final item was purchased.
He consequently urged senior high school administrators to exercise consideration in that regard.
Dr. Nkansah emphasised that a committee comprising representatives from the GES, Free SHS Secretariat, TVET Service, and the Conference of Heads of Government-Assisted Secondary Schools (CHASS) contributed to the creation of the national prospectus.
According to him, “CHASS’s input in the national prospectus is so crucial because the GES acknowledged their role in the operation of second cycle schools.”
READ: New: Private JHS Students Moving to Public JHS for BECE Not Eligible for Public SHS Placement
In order to prevent having their belongings stolen, he counselled the students to make sure that all of their personal objects were stitched or stamped with their names.
Good job, thank you for contributing to the good of education in Ghana especially for the information of all stakeholders and the general welfare of the youth of Ghana