A Senior Lecturer at the Kumasi Technical University (KsTU) has called on the Ghana Education Service (GES) to give special consideration to students from rural communities in the Senior High School (SHS) placement process.
Prof Solomon Forkuo Kwarteng said rural students who obtain aggregates between 12 and 20 should be given equal opportunities to access Category A schools as their urban counterparts who obtain aggregates between 6 and 11.
He argued that students should not be assessed solely on their BECE grades without considering the differences in educational resources available to them.
According to him, students in urban areas generally have greater access to educational facilities and learning resources than those in rural communities.
He noted that some rural communities lack basic infrastructure such as reliable electricity, making access to computers and other digital learning tools particularly difficult.
Prof Kwarteng’s comments follow concerns over the difficulties some students from rural communities face in gaining admission to Category A schools under the SHS placement system because of lower BECE grades.
He maintained that the circumstances under which students learn should be considered when evaluating their academic performance and placement opportunities.
He said rural students who obtain aggregates between 11 and 20 could have achieved better grades if they had access to the same educational facilities and learning opportunities available to students in urban areas.
“If they had the opportunity in the urban areas, they would have gotten better grades,” Prof Kwarteng stated during a panel discussion on Otec FM’s morning show, Nyansapo, on Thursday, September 24, 2026.
Prof Kwarteng therefore called on the government to invest more in educational infrastructure and other learning resources in rural communities to help bridge the gap.
He questioned the fairness of having rural and urban students write the same BECE despite significant differences in their learning environments
He argued that students with better access to facilities are likely to have an advantage over those from underserved communities.
Source: Ghana/otecfmghana.com/Francis Appiah
