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The confusion over this year�s Senior High School selection process can be blamed squarely on the Ministry of Education and the Ghana Education Service. The two bodies failed to properly sensitize parents and candidates on the decision to emphasize on absolute or raw scores, instead of grades of candidates in the Computerized School Selection Placement System (CSSPS) process. It will be recalled that on September 2, 2009, Mr Alex Tettey-Enyo, Minister of Education, announced: �The general public is reminded that to qualify for selection - the total aggregate of the 6 subjects of the candidate must not exceed 30.� The Minister emphasized, in the presence of Mr. Samuel Bannerman-Mensah, GES Director-General, that �A candidate�s grade in any of the four (4) core subjects should not exceed (grade) 5 �He added that the minimum grade for each of the �two other best subjects� must not exceed (grade) 6. Mr Tettey-Enyo made the pronouncements at the maiden edition of a programme dubbed: �Matters Arising� organized by the Ministry of Information in a form of a press conference to respond to pertinent issues as and when they arise. The Minister also pointed out that �A Candidate who has ANY of his/her Core subject cancelled by WAEC will be deemed not qualified for selection and placement. Paradoxically, the Minister was entrenching the belief by parents and candidates that the selection was going to be based on just grades when he was fully aware that was not going to be the case. Available figures show that the number of candidates that took the 2009 Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) was 395,647 while those qualified by the approved Ghana Education Service criteria was 200,642. By early September, the total number of vacancies declared by public SHS and technical institutions was 198,000. Vacancies in existing private schools are unknown but these are not catered for the CSSPS. Out of anxiety parents and guardians who were uncertain of the fate of their children and wards reportedly began frantic efforts to secure places in prestigious schools for their wards. This occasioned a warning from the Ministry of Education. According to a publication by a national daily, the Ministry cautioned parents and school heads to desist from seeking and offering SHS admissions outside the CSSPS. The Head of the Public Relations Unit of the Ministry of Education, Mr Paul Krampah, was reported as saying that there would be strict monitoring after the placement exercise and that any head caught engaging in any admission outside the CSSPS would be sanctioned. He was on top of his job when he explained that the placement had been done on merit, with the absolute or raw scores of candidates being used, explaining that obtaining Grade 1 in all subjects (or 10 ones) did not mean that a candidate should get his/her first choice school by all means. Mr Krampah said every year the West African Examinations Council (WAEC) had a range for the grading system of candidates and that the Grade 1 range could be between 75 and 100 per cent or 70 and 100 per cent. For instance, he said, in the placement exercise, a candidate with Grade 1 with a score of 80 per cent would be placed ahead of a candidate with Grade 1 with a score of 70 per cent. Besides, he said, candidates� programmes were also considered in the selection process. Before the close of the week, Mr. Krampah indicated that figures on vacancies in the public SHS were still being collated for admission of the students. He also blamed the problem of some candidates not gaining admission on parents who did not make the right choices for their children.