The Ministry of Education has announced that the results of the Computerised School Selection and Placement System (CSSPS) will be released tomorrow, Friday, September 4. This delay was caused by a significant number of candidates who were unable to upload their data.
During an interview on the Joy FM Super Morning Show on Thursday, September 3, Hashmin Mohammed, Press Secretary and Spokesperson for the Ministry of Education, confirmed that the Ministry is now fully prepared to publish the placement results. When asked if the placement process had been completed and whether the Ministry was ready to announce the results, Mr. Mohammed assured that everything was finished and that the results would be released the following day.
“We are set to release the placement results tomorrow [Friday],” he stated. Mr. Mohammed explained that the initial plan was to announce the placements last week, but the Ministry extended the deadline after realising that a large number of candidates had not successfully uploaded their information onto the CSSPS platform.
He emphasized the importance of giving these affected candidates additional time, as the placement process aims to ensure that all qualified candidates have the opportunity to secure a place in a second-cycle institution. “When we thought we could release it last week, unfortunately, we found that some students were unable to load their data into the CSSPS system. And looking at the numbers, the situation was considerable,” he elaborated.
According to Mr Mohammed, about 20,000 candidates had initially been unable to upload their data when the Ministry extended the deadline.
He said the decision to extend the process was guided by the need to ensure fairness and equity.
“If we are operating on an equity-based system, we needed to offer them the opportunity to extend the date so that they would be able to upload their data into the system for them to be placed into a school,” he said.
He stressed that being qualified for placement comes with an expectation that the candidate will be assigned a school.
“One of the requirements is that once you are qualified, you need to be placed into a school,” he said.
Mr Mohammed said the extension has allowed the vast majority of the affected candidates to complete the process.
“As I am speaking to you now, we’ve had about 18,000 who have inputted their data into the system,” he disclosed.
He said the remaining approximately 2,000 candidates are students from special needs schools.
According to him, these candidates do not have to go through the same school choice confirmation process as other candidates.
“The remaining 2,000, we know where they are. They are the special needs schools. And special needs schools, they don’t need to go through the choice confirmation,” he explained.
He said the placement of such candidates is handled differently because their schools have already been identified.
“Their schools only give us the list, and then we place them manually into the system because their schools are already defined,” he said.
