The Ministry of Education has announced that the Computerised School Selection and Placement System (CSSPS) resolution centres would continue to operate until September 18, 2026 to resolve remaining cases of students yet to be placed in senior high schools. Editorial Standards
The decision to extend the date to September 18 was announced by the Press Secretary to the Education Minister, Hashmin Mohammed.
He explained that the move was to give more time to students and their parents to resolve senior high school placement issues before the new academic year begins.
The CSSPS resolution centres are currently on operation nation-wide, and the six days operating are from Monday to Friday.
The centres are there to help students, parents and guardians who are still unable to resolve SHS placement issues to find solutions.
Mr Mohammed said this on an interview on a local radio station, explaining that “by Friday 18, we are still hoping that it should go down because on September 18, students are expected to report to school.
So I think the centres are there, they will remain there from Mondays to Fridays for students to report.”
The announcement comes as the Ministry tries to repair the damage done to the placement process after the latest exercise took place, whereby some students were left unplaced due to technical and logistical challenges.
The CSSPS, a computerised placement system, allocates students to senior high schools and technical and vocational training institutions based on where they made their choices, the availability of vacancies and the placement criteria.
All the same, student cases that require further consideration will normally include those who got the chance to choose placement options but were not placed in their preferred choice, applicants who were not able to find placements after the first exercise, students not placed and students who need help navigating and understanding all available options. Editorial Ethics & Independence
Mr Mohammed said there have been about 53,887 placements under the self-placement arrangement and about 33,726 students out of that number have successfully secured placement so far. ‘However, there are still cases that need further attention,” he stated.
The six days operation of the CSSPS resolution centres also means they are attending to cases that still require the attention of officers to be resolved.
As at Today, 15, 9,948 cases had been reported to the resolution centres, and about 4,531 cases had been resolved. The figures show both the strain and the work that are being done to resolve the placement cases, and as the deadline for the reporting of cases of September 18 draws close, officers are expected to do further reviews and provide solutions where the cases require attention.
It also comes after the Education Ministry announced earlier that those students who did not find a placement during the first exercise could opt for the self-placement process.
It is meant to offer an alternative path for students who did not get placements in the main exercise – by choosing an institution with open vacancies as opposed to being without a placement.
The self-placement process is designed to enable an applicant to choose an institution that has an available vacancy for that applicant when they fail to get an placement in the main exercise.
However, vacancies are only limited to the institutions that allow such arrangements, and so students will have to make sure that they will get a seat in their preferred choice of institutions.
This means that student applicants cannot always get the chance to be placed in their first choice for those institutions that are unable to accommodate them.
Parents and guardians, who have to wait till the 18th of September to know what will happen to the students’ placement cases, can help to put pressure on officials to work diligently to minimize the remaining cases. Corrections Policy
The hope is that the work done at the resolution centres will lessen the number of cases left unplaced and allow students to start classes early.
Meanwhile, the Ministry of Education is urging the public to follow official information from the Ministry and the CSSPS Secretariat and also help stop the spread of wrong information on social media by providing false hope and confusion to clients and students.