The Ghana Education Service (GES) in remarks published on 10 October 2026 urged parents not to pay “goro boys” promising senior high school places, calling the middlemen criminals and scammers.
Daniel Fenyi, the GES head of public relations, told GhanaWeb TV’s Lowdown show that the Service has no dealings with people who claim they can influence placement for a fee. “They are criminals. They are scammers. We don’t work with them,” he said.
The warning targets the families still caught in this year’s self-placement process. Parents who pay middlemen risk losing their money with no school place to show for it.
Under the 2026 Computerised School Selection and Placement System, about 527,000 students were placed automatically. That left roughly 13 per cent of candidates to choose schools themselves through the self-placement portal. Official figures put the number eligible for self-placement at 53,887, of whom 33,726 had secured schools by mid-September. The Education Ministry then extended the exercise to 18 September.
Fenyi said parents struggling with the process should go to their children’s former school heads, district education offices or the placement resolution centres. GES runs 17 such centres nationwide, with the national centre at GNAT Hall in Accra. He said official staff there handle cases, including families who have trouble using the online system.
He asked parents who had already lost money to share details that could help trace the middlemen, such as phone numbers, names, payment records and photographs. Many victims, he said, have been unwilling to come forward.
This year’s placement drew complaints of long queues at resolution centres, particularly in Accra and the Ashanti Region. In September, Fenyi said 15 of the 17 centres were running smoothly. He argued that the pressure in those two areas did not amount to a national crisis, noting that there were about 800,000 places for just over 600,000 students.
