The 2022 Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) candidates in Anomabo in the Central Region have been advised to be guided by the country's current unemployment situation and select more Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) programmes.

This, according to the guidance and counselling coordinator at the Mfantseman Municipal Education Directorate in the Central Region, Jacob Essilfie Taylor, would among other things, not make the pupils find themselves wanting after completing secondary school.

Mr Taylor was addressing a section of Junior High School (JHS) finalists at a senior high school selection briefing seminar organised by Non-Governmental Organisation; Boys and Girls Club of Ghana, for the candidates in the Anomabo area.

According to him, he could not force them to choose particular programmes but only advise them to do so following a pronouncement by the finance minister that the payroll was chocked.

“Our finance minister made it clear that our payroll is chocked and this is a signal to us that all of us cannot be employed by the government so what we have to do is to encourage skill training where most of our students can go into such programmes and at the end of the day there are two options; either you employ yourselves or employed by the government.

“Currently, most of our students who graduate from nursing and other institutions are all looking up to the government because they don't have the skills to establish on their own so I'll entreat you all, you know as counsellors we do not force so I'm not forcing you; I'm just encouraging you to select TVET programmes so that if you're not employed by the government, you can establish your own companies and even employ others”, Mr Taylor explained. 

He indicated that government had as of 2021 added 139 TVET schools to the mainstream schools which had brought the total number of TVET institutions in the country to 186 and are all benefitting from the free SHS programme.

He dismissed the assertion that TVET programmes were meant for dull students, saying: “those tags are false. It's never true. Infact TVET graduates now, unlike before, have a future, one can now rise through from National proficiency 1 to PhD i.e Doctor of Technology”. 

Mr Essilfie Taylor then took the pupils through the dos and don'ts in school placement selection.

He finally charged head teachers, teachers and counsellors to assist the finalists in the selection process.

The purpose of the seminar according to the club's executive director, Mr Isaac Kweku Quainoo, was to equip the pupils to acquaint themselves with better understanding of how schools and programmes were selected at the basic school level and also how the Computerised School Selection Placement System (CSSPS) works at the Ghana Education Service (GES).