The Ghana Education Service (GES) has released a harmonised prospectus for senior high and technical schools in the country.
Known as the “National Prospectus”, it is designed for all prospective first-year students and spells out the uniformed requirements for all fresh students.
Consequently, all schools are expected to adhere to the national prospectus without imposing any extra items apart from those that have been officially prescribed.
By this arrangement, parents will no longer have to wait until the rollout of the Computerised School Selection and Placement before going out to shop for their children.
The national prospectus is in three categories, with each sub-divided into basic needs and cleaning materials to make it easier for parents.
Category ‘A’ covers 27 basic items such as hard body suitcase or trunk, chop box or hard plastic container, toiletries, beddings, a pair of footwear (school specific), underwear, cutlery, and other educational materials such as mathematical set and scientific calculator, among others.
For Category B, which is cleaning materials, the GES has listed three different groups. Students who would be categorised under group one, would be required to take along a pair of hand gloves (hard), liquid soap (5 litres) and one kilogramme of washing powder.
Students categorised under group two would be required to buy one bleach (small size), one dustpan, one long handle broom and one scrubbing brush, while those under group three would be required to buy one standing mop and mop bucket, one duster and one short local broom.
Under Category ‘A’, all day students are expected to have one mathematical set and a scientific calculator, decent sandals (school specific – No embellishment), decent sneakers (black or white) and a school bag.
However, for the second category, which is cleaning materials, the three different groupings also apply.
Briefing the Daily Graphic, the Director-General of the GES, Dr Eric Nkansah, explained that based on previous experience, the service had decided that the candidates would not be allowed to buy all the items required or categorised under the cleaning materials labelled as “second category”.
He explained that students in each school would be categorised under three groups to ensure that all the cleaning materials were catered for.
“We do not want the situation where previously, each student was made to buy a tall list of cleaning materials and that is why we have grouped the items into three,” Dr Nkansah explained.
He advised parents to buy all the items, except the cleaning materials, while waiting for the categorisation of the students, “so that they can buy the items specified by the group.”
The D-G explained that the move was to help parents to start buying the items before the release of the Computerised School Selection and Placement later this week.
“We are promising parents that the placement will be smooth and there is, therefore, no need to be worried,” Dr Nkansah assured parents, explaining that his officers were well-prepared to handle any challenges.
He reiterated that the harmonised prospectus was necessary to eliminate items that schools could do without and also ensure that schools did not include such items and used same as a barrier to the timely enrolment of students.
Dr Nkansah thanked parents for their patience, assuring them that all qualified candidates would be admitted to a school, since there were enough vacancies.
The Director-General reminded heads of schools that the harmonised prospectus automatically replaced school specific prospectus and appealed to them to comply.
He advised heads of schools to revert to his office or their districts or regional directors if they had any concerns or challenges.
Dr Nkansah warned those who might demand money for placement that there was no room for such people and that the service would fish them out and the law would deal with them.
