The Ghana Education Service (GES) has issued a warning to Senior High School heads who charge unapproved fees to first-year students.
Such heads will be sanctioned, according to the statement, because the acts are illegal and will not be tolerated.
Parents have complained about unapproved fees levied by school administrators and items not approved in the new student prospectus.
Cassandra Twum Ampofo, Head of Public Relations at the Ghana Education Service, told journalists in Accra that school heads who break the rules will face serious consequences.
“We are cautioning the heads who are going contrary to what we have discussed. We’ve realized that some were adding A4 sheets, mosquito coils, and all of that in the prospectus. For us, that was really worrying, so we had to caution them to let them know that, that wasn’t what we agreed on.”
Following the release of the school placement for graduates of the 2022 Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) into SHSs and Technical, Vocational, Education, and Training (TVET) schools across the country, first-year SHS students began reporting to school on Monday, February 27, 2023.
538,399 of the 547,329 candidates who took the exam qualified for school placement.
372,780 students were automatically assigned to various schools.
However, 165,601 candidates were forced to self-place because they could not be matched to their preferred school.