Multiple Education-rescuing Measures

Subsidy to lay private and confessional schools, creation of new departments, redeployment of teachers, recruitment of others constitute government’s answers to tabled complaints.

As the dust settles on the Head of State’s magnanimity yesterday August 30 ordering the discontinuance of proceedings pending before the Yaounde Military Tribunal against alleged perpetrators of acts of violence in the North West and South West Regions, education has stood tall in the steps government has taken thus far in response to tabled complaints. The Presidential decision, coming on the eve of back-to-school 2017-2018, adds to other multiple measures government had taken over the months to peacefully resolve crisis that greatly jeopardised the last academic year in the two Anglophones regions.
Wide-ranging Appeasement Measures
There has notably been the creation of the Department of French Modern Letters at the University of Bamenda to bring solutions to expressed lack of French teachers in English-speaking secondary schools. Trade Unionists had decried what they termed was the ‘half-baked’ nature of some graduates from the Higher Teachers’ Training Colleges which often led to teachers trained in one system being sent to teach subjects for which they were not trained or to teach inanother language of instruction other than the language they master better. Such a department coupled with the creation of a National Commission for the Promotion of Bilingualism and Multiculturalism, could greatly boost the teaching and learning process in the country as well as enhance the bilingual nature of Cameroon.
The Head of State’s authorisation for a special recruitment of 1,000 young science and technical teachers is under implementation. Interested candidates had already submitted their recruitment files which are under study now by competent administrations. Further still, on complaints of a weak financial capacity of lay private and confessional schools to be up to standards in the training of their students, the Head of State ordered the setting up of a special fund of FCFA 2 billion to serve as subsidy for lay private and confessional schools.
In addition, the Minister of Basic Education prepared the ground and launched an integration exercise for contract teachers into the public service. As a matter of fact, a multi-year contracting plan for “parent teachers” is being implem...