More than 36,000 candidates who selected Aburi Girls’ Senior High School and Achimota School as their preferred choices will compete for approximately 2,100 available places in the 2026 Computerised School Selection and Placement System (CSSPS).

The figures mean that more than 34,000 applicants who chose the two schools are unlikely to secure placement there and will have to compete for spaces in other schools when the 2026 CSSPS results are released on Friday, September 4, 2026.

CSSPS Coordinator, Sherif Sulemana, disclosed the figures during a radio interview on Joy FM monitored by Graphic Online on Wednesday.

According to him, Aburi Girls’ received 8,225 applications for about 800 available places, while Achimota recorded approximately 28,000 applications for only about 1,300 vacancies.

The competition is particularly intense among candidates with strong aggregate scores.

Mr. Sulemana said about 3,000 of the applicants to Aburi Girls’ had aggregates between six and 12, despite the school having only about 800 places.

At Achimota, approximately 14,800 applicants recorded aggregates between six and 12, against about 1,300 declared vacancies.

“Those are the realities within which we operate, and we want the general public to understand,” he said.

Mr. Sulemana explained that securing a place at a preferred school was not determined by aggregate alone.

He said candidates were first ranked nationally based on their aggregate scores. Where two or more candidates seeking the same school, programme and residential arrangement recorded identical aggregates, their raw examination scores were used to break the tie.

The placement process then matches candidates’ programme selections and boarding preferences against the vacancies declared by individual schools.

He noted that a candidate with a comparatively weaker aggregate could therefore secure a place ahead of another candidate if the former obtained higher raw scores in a tie-breaking situation.

Mr. Sulemana consequently urged parents and candidates not to determine their placement expectations solely on the basis of aggregate scores.

He also suggested that the CSSPS Secretariat may need to review the practice of publicly releasing candidates’ raw scores, noting that the scores are primarily used internally to resolve placement ties.

Meanwhile, Press Secretary and Spokesperson for the Ministry of Education, Hashmin Mohammed, disclosed that heads of schools are allocated a discretionary quota of about 5 per cent of their declared vacancies.