2017 GCE ‘O’ and ‘A’ Levels: Results Witness Significant Drop

The Advanced Level scored 35.32 per-cent pass while Ordinary level made 25.29 percentages passed.

The Cameroon General Certificate of Education Board (CGCEB) has released the results of its 2017 examinations. While the Advanced Level General and Technical Education was announced in Buea 11 August, 2017, the Ordinary Level was released two days later on 14 August. The statistics indicate a 35.32% pass for Advanced Level down from 66.52% in 2016. The Advanced Level Technical scored 22.37% against 54.33% in 2016. For the General Education, 38.628 candidates registered for the examination and had 33.037 students who effectively sat for the examination. 3.591 absences were recorded while 11.670 were declared successful. For the Advanced Level Technical, 3.472 students entered their names as candidates. Of the number, 2.567 wrote while 905 students were absent and 574 candidates passed.
Meanwhile the GCE Ordinary level General Education (O/L) results show a 25.29 percentage pass this year drastically dropping from 62.17 in 2016. Only 11.770 candidates pass out of the 46.532 who sat the exam in the various centres of Cameroon. The GCE Technical O/L registered a 28.49 percentage pass as against 40.12 last year. The Baccalaureat Technique and related exams shall be proclaimed after the on-going practical.
Results of some candidates have been withheld for various suspected malpractices. The concerned candidates are requested to appear before the Examination Executive Council (EEC) ad hoc committee at the Board in Buea on 21 August, 2017, at 10 am. The CGCE Board is also withholding the results of candidates who wrote the 2017 examination without prior registration or registered after the April 15, 2017 deadline. The Board emphasized that it has to verify and ensure that the students are void of malpractices and meet the registration formalities. The results can be consulted on www.camgceb.org.
This year’s nose-dive in GCE results has been blamed by Officials on the socio-political climate that shoke Anglophone Cameroon with ghost schools from November 2016 grounding two of the three yearly terms of studies.

INTERVIEW

 Dr. Monono Ekema Humphrey:  “We Did The Work As It Was Required”

Registrar of the Cameroon GCE Board.

The Minister of Secondary Education has just published the results of the General Certificate of Education for 2017. Given that you were at the centre of the exercise what is your appraisal of this year’s exam?
It has not been a smooth road. It has been full of challenges. From registration right down to publication of results, amid this troubling socio-political context which you know very well the registration was very timid. And that led us to extending registration time till almost into April. We shifted the exam timetable by more than two weeks. You can see why results are coming out in August. I must say that from the beginning our Boss, the Minister of Secondary Education, took it personal and like a good shepherd, made several visits in the field encouraging parents, students, even those of us at the Board to put hands on deck and make sure that we give equal opportunities for those who want to do the exams. That is why we recorded this huge number of candidates who displayed their enthusiasm to write and you could see that during the written phase. From the practical downwards you could see that despite the fact that some of them had not been to school they had this urge to write their exams because for them it is their future. The government put in a lot of effort in securing most of the schools. We did the work as it was required. The teachers came out in their numbers to do all that was required. We are saying there was a GCE after all. It is our collective responsibility, the percentages notwithstanding, it is time for us to ask ourselves and look at ourselves in the face and realise that we have hurt our children.  I think that these children deserve more attention, a little more teaching to be able to stand and face life. I am grateful to God that history will have it down our memory that there was once a GCE 2017 amid such a socio-political context.
You talked of the zeal of the children to write the exams and yet there was a lot of failure. What explains this?
That is OK. Failure is not the end of the world. Failure is the beginning of a new dawn. The attempt that the children made was quite encouraging given that they are still eager to learn. We should take it from there and give them the right environment to learn.
Now that the results are out how do the candidates get to know their results quickly? There is a lot of cry out there that the numbers given them are not working.
It is just that we hear what we want to hear and we listen only to what we want to listen. We are not attentive to what people are telling us. Firstly, let them go to the website of the Ministry of Secondary Education. www.minesec.cm and get the results. In the booklets that have been published there is the website of the GCE Board and that too has been communicated. Do you know from where I got my Ordinary Level results last night? They came from Italy in my whatsap. The slips will be in the schools, the G4s will be in the schools, the radio is announcing the results. And those who wrote should go back to their centres to get their detailed results. They are also on radio in Bamenda, ...