"A COMPLAINT ABOUT ISSUES PLAGUING THE ANGLOPHONE EDUCATIONAL SECTOR, PRESENTED BY THE PEOPLE'S REPRESENTATIVES OF ENGLISH EXPRESSION"
"After sustained consultations with many Anglophone education stakeholders, despite countless memos addressed to them especially by the Anglophone teacher trade unions on urgent issues plaguing our educational setup, we Anglophone Members of Parliament have resolved to draw the attention of the Prime Minister and the Government, especially the Ministers of Secondary Education and Higher Education to the following legal provisions, anomalies and injustices," reads the opening paragraph.
Among these legal provisions, anomalies and injustices they cited the Prime Ministerial Committee recommendation of September 1992, "that Cameroon's dual system of education be helped to develop its distinctive characteristics." They express surprise at the anomaly that "the GCE Board which was created to handle Anglophone examination today still continues to manage only GCE Technical Examination, an infinitesimally small part of what is the Anglophone technical education heritage". More scandalous and vexing is that the Cameroon GCE Board only receives and is expected to administer without moderating, technical examinations prepared by MINESEC,…"
"The scandalous fact that English-speaking learners in technical colleges continue to be subjected to the injustice of having to sit for CAP, Probatoire and Baccalaureat, French-oriented examinations, in a global where Anglo-Saxon technical examinations like the City and Guilds, the LCCI, the different RSAs, etc. are vogue and contrary to the provisions of the 1998 Law of Educational cited above"
The MPs main condemn the surreptitious moves MINESEC was trying to take to alter the Secondary Educational Syllabuses without any consultations with the stakeholders.
On the University of Bamenda and its schools of education: HTTC, HTTTC the MPs were bitter over the fact that the whole place is flooded with francophones and even the programmes are fashioned out of francophone schools. They questioned why government could not adapt curricula from some English-speaking countries. It condemned the production of half-baked teachers who come out from the schools worse than they entered.
The Petitioners drew the attention of the Rt. Hon. Prime Minister, the Minister of Higher Education and the Minister of Secondary Education to the colonial domination with the attendant over-simplification, anomalies, injustices and the outright subversion of the legal provisios in education as practiced by, especially by the Ministry of Secondary Education and the Ministry of Higher Education.
For example, whereas a Prime Ministerial Committee recommendation of September 1992 stated "that Cameroon's dual – English and French – inherited systems of education be helped to develop its distinctive characteristics";
§ Whereas the proceedings of the 1995 Forum on Education, whose final report submitted in Yaoundé 27 May 1995, prepared the groundwork for the Education Law in Cameroon;
§ Whereas the Law of Education, No 98/004 of 14 April 1998, governs education in Cameroon and, as per its paragraphs 4, 5, 11, 15, 16, 17, 20 and 25, defines the orientation of Cameroun's educational system;
§ Whereas Section 15 sub-one highlights the existence of two Cameroonian sub-systems thus laying emphasis on the bicultural heritage and the same Section 15 sub-two of the same law, asserts that both subsystems shall coexist, "each preserving its specific method of evaluation and award of certificates";
The accused ministries – Secondary (MINESEC) and Higher Education (MINHE)– were engaged in practices that could only be seen as blatant attempts to undermine, subjugate, acculturate and subsume Southern Cameroonians into the Napoleonic-Jacobin francophone system.
The Petitioners went on to compute the instances of colonial domination:
§ The astounding anomaly that the Cameroon GCE Board, which was created to handle all Southern Cameroonian examinations, continues to manage only the GCE Technical examination, an infinitesimally small part of what is the Southern Cameroonian technical examination heritage;
§ The scandalous fact that the same Cameroon GCE Board only receives and is expected to administer without moderating, technical examinations prepared by MINESEC, with untold negative consequences like the case of the 2013 Probatoire examination in which the Biology question paper was served to candidates with its marking guide behind;
§ The outrageous abnormality that these examinations - CAP, Probatoire and BAC – are, from all indications, set in French over the years and poorly translated, with wanton errors and inexcusable presentation flaws, and with the inevitable outcome of injustice done to the English-speaking candidates of these examinations;
§ The immoral fact that English-speaking learners in technical colleges continue to be subjected to the injustice of having to sit for CAP, Probatoire and Baccalaureat, French-oriented examinations, in a global context where Anglo-Saxon technical examinations like the City and Guilds, the LCCI, the different RSAs, etc are vogue, and contrary to the provisions of the 1998 Law of Education cited above;
§ The shocking fact that the newly introduced BEPC Bilingue, was written for the first time in 2013 in the fourth year (instead of the fifth year where it should have been written concomitantly with the GCE O/L) in violation of the Section 16, sub article 2 of the new law synchronising the cycles of study for the secondary, a clear indication that this newly introduced examination purposes to continue along the lines of the old dispensation with its obsolete Probatoire in place that should have been scrapped (the 7th year of Southern Cameroonian Primary Education was dropped on the understanding that the Probatoire would also be scrapped, so that the BEPC be sent to 5th Year, for a proper synchronisation of the systems);
§ The disgraceful fact that the said BEPC Bilingue, in its maiden edition, was shoddy and sub-standard from many perspectives, apparently having been set in haste and marred by outright mistranslations of what had clearly been initially prepared in French, together with howling errors, and inconsistent and unrealistic timing of the different disciplines;
§ The portentous fact that snap and ill-timed MINESEC reforms that almost had a keg of gunpowder effect on the nation last year are still being carried out in secretive manner during this 2013/2014 Academic Year, with surreptitious, multiply-deferred programmes for a validation seminar planned for Mbalmayo;
§ Yes, the alarming fact that MINESEC authorities appear determined to sneak in the controversial "integrated sciences" programme for Forms One and Two, this time with a controverted nomenclature, "notional sciences", which discipline was seen as an adulteration with insidious designs and consequently roundly deplored in a tripartite meeting with Southern Cameroonian teacher trade unions on 17/10/2012;
§ The fact that in the said tripartite meeting that brought together the Minister of Secondary Education with his close collaborators on the one hand and Southern Cameroonian Teacher Trade Unions on the other, aspects of the reform were debated and compromise positions adopted, especially that the sciences should be taught as separate disciplines in Southern Cameroonian schools and that reforms would henceforth be collegial;
§ The added fact that after the said tripartite, when public authorities started disseminating wrong messages about what had transpired, one of the teacher unions forwarded a memory aid reminding the Minister about the positions adopted on these burning issues and deploring the display of bad faith, reminder which appeared to have gone unnoticed;
Futhermore, the petition continue:
§ The consequent implication that the present unilateral attempts by MINESEC at revising the new educational programme proposal is indicative of high-handedness, administrative subterfuge, unwarranted personalisation of national policy and bad faith;
§ The fact that in our context, with emergence hoped for in 2035, proposals have been made by pedagogic inspectorates and trade unions that Geology be introduced and taught in all Southern Cameroonian schools, like it is compulsorily taught to ALL francophone students in 4e and 3e, yet these proposals appear to have fallen on deaf ears;
§ The fact that many proposals have been made from different platforms that living languages like German, Spanish and Arabic (today we add Italian and Chinese which latter is being taught francophone learners with the help of the Confucius Centre and the Department of Chinese in ENS Maroua) be introduced into the Southern Cameroonian educational programme, which proposals have all fallen on deaf ears (see the document launching the entrance examination into ENS Yaounde and the number of places advertised for English, French, German, Spanish and Arabic and see how many Southern Cameroonian qualify for them);
§ The fact that francophone learners who offer these languages have the benefit of scholarships to these countries, which their Southern Cameroonian compeers are deprived of, by national commission or omission;
§ The fact that Southern Cameroonian students who flock especially to Germany for post high school studies spend exorbitant sums to learn German in crash courses at the Goethe Institute or in immersion courses out there when this would be avoided by the introduction of the teaching of these languages in the subsystem;
§ Articles 78 and 79 of the Presidential Decree No 2011/045 of 08 March 2011 organising the University of Bamenda, which indicates entry qualifications as per "Anglo-Saxon standards" and which goes ahead to talk about equivalence, not only geared towards maintaining quality standards but also hopefully towards maintaining the University's Anglo-Saxon nature;
§ The shocking fact that these clear laws governing the running of this institution notwithstanding, the so-called Anglo-Saxon Higher Technical Teacher Training College (HTTTC) ridiculously referred to as ENSET Bambili with teaching personnel the majority of who are francophones, prefers to leave teaching to be done mostly in French, in flagrant violation of the norms of a bona fide Anglo-Saxon University and with display of a manifestly callous indifference about the fate of Southern Cameroonians students;
§ The outrageous fact that teaching programmes in HTTTC Bambili are fake translations of teaching programmes in ENSET Douala, when viable Anglo-Saxon Technical Teacher Training Programmes can be got from other Anglo-Saxon countries today and adapted;
§ The abnormality that examinations like the entrance into Polytechnique, ENSET Douala, HTTTC and even HTTC Bambili, etc have also been set in French and very poorly translated with the same wanton expression errors and similar inexcusable presentation flaws, to the detriment and disadvantage of English speaking candidates;
§ The ignominy that entrance examinations especially into the so-called Southern Cameroonian (Technical) Teacher Training Colleges as well as into many other higher institutions of learning (e.g. Polytechnic Yaounde, the Military Academy, EAMAC, etc) have continued to be organised with outright bias against English-speaking candidates, abuses which have been deplored in memos to public authorities to little effect;
§ The fact that the technical education setup has over the years not favoured the training or progress of Southern Cameroonian teachers in the technical field, be it in the then lone ENSET Douala or in the National Polytechnique in Yaounde, with the attendant existence of a yawning lacuna in this sector;
§ The fact that to solve this acute personnel lack, administration rather resorts to recruiting francophone teachers with little or no knowledge of English to teach in Southern Cameroonian technical colleges instead of trying to borrow Southern Cameroonian expertise from the private sector, with the sad consequence that Southern Cameroonian technical education for years has remained the bête noire and laughing stock of Cameroon's education;
§ The Head of State's 2013 exhortation in his traditional eve of Youth Day address, that young teachers in training should "study hard and be best placed to face the stiff competition that lies ahead" and that "it is imperative for (teachers) to get back that sacred fire".
§ The unfortunate administrative trifling with and consequent bastardisation of the 2013 teaching practice (TP) exercise in HTTC Bambili contrary to this presidential exhortation and to what obtains in ENS Yaounde and ENS Maroua. This TP was characterised by the unprecedented supercilious exclusiveness by HTTC authorities, ignoring of the technical service (the inspectorate) charged with taking care of every TP exercise, by the by-passing of the practising schools and by a suspicious administrative pandering to trainees' whims (they were asked to choose where they liked to go for teaching practise and they chose far-flung schools in the seven divisions of the NW, in three divisions in the South West and for HTTTC, some from this Anglo-Saxon training school chose schools in the West Region!). The consequence of this adventurism was that mediocrity became norm and marks as high as 19, 18 and 17 on 20 were given to very many students who had not had proper and adequate teaching exposure and monitoring;
§ The alarming fact that despite the hue and cry raised last year and the countless memos put up by concerned parties to check such deliberate administrative undermining of a dignified Anglo-Saxon teacher training system, supervisory Ministries have stayed inexplicably mute, with the consequence that HTTC (or "ENS") Bambili has, this 2014 Academic Year, still spited the Inspectorate, its own Faculty lecturers and the notion of "Practising Schools" and sent students to their chosen schools with the Chief of Division for training and seminars boasting that she and just two colleagues "will go round and inspect all students of all the disciplines in third and fifth year and they will graduate";
§ The fact that if such reckless adventurism continues unchecked, it will have untold negative, even nefarious repercussions on the quality of teachers who tomorrow will be responsible for educating the nation's youths;
§ Finally, the fact that His Excellency the President of the Republic has made emergence by 2035 in all domains, education being one of these, the obsessive guiding principle of his administration.
Warning against Colonisation
In respect of the above observations, we strongly warn that Government should:
§ Keep in mind that the education of the nation's children is a joint project so any changes should be effected in consultation with all stakeholders – authorities, teachers, students, parents, trade unions, civil society, etc;
§ Keep in mind that the country's laws continue to harp on biculturalism and bilingualism and the need for co-existence so attempts at harmonisation, which remain very sensitive, will only end up as adulteration with the effect of mediocrity;
§ Equally keep in mind that all attempts at harmonisation in our context have left a bitter taste in the mouth of the Southern Cameroonian community so the majority of them see such as uncalled for;
§ Note that MINESEC's unilateral pickling with the educational programme is in no way binding on the Southern Cameroonian subsystem of education especially because of the absence of consultation and collegiality;
§ Note that the selective introduction of teaching aspects into one and not the other sub-system of education – aspect considered important to individual and collective advancement – smacks of unwarranted bias, which is destructive of all attempts at keeping the nation welded together.
Recommendations
We insist that that Government should:
§ Respect the compromise arrived at during the 17/10/2012 tripartite meeting that held in the Minister's Cabinet in Yaounde (especially the re-introduction of Physics, Chemistry and Biology, which disciplines were given 300 minutes; the urgent crafting and dissemination of the package for the three years of the orientation cycle; a good faith statement about the Forum of Education which was proposed for 2013 but which has not yet been announced, etc);
§ Stop the unilateral revision or reviewing of the educational programme being undertaken by MINESEC until proper consultations are carried out with all education stakeholders;
§ Always respect the standard pass in the GCE A/L s recognised by its competent examining Board and stop playing subterfuge when launching competitive exams, like the Ministry of Defence's which always exempts successful Southern Cameroonians aspirants with two A/L papers from writing while opening up to all francophones with a mere pass in the Baccalaureat (we know how scandalously low deliberating juries sometimes drop to make sure many students pass all the francophone end of course examinations);
§ Check, reverse with immediate effect and punish the perpetrators of administrative high-handedness and personalisation of public affairs, like in the case of the adulteration and bastardisation of TP in HTTC Bambili, which has given the impression that these new officials want to lower the quality of the products destined for Southern Cameroonian schools for selfish reasons or with ulterior motives and insidious designs. Come to think of it, ENS Bambili should not operate as if it were different from the other two ENS-es.
§ Introduce the teaching of living languages in the Southern Cameroonian sub-system of education so that Southern Cameroonian learners should be able to have top-notch relations with countries that Cameroon collaborates with especially in the educational realm;
§ The few Southern Cameroonian students who pass in these francophone-oriented technical examinations should be selected into Technical Teacher Training Colleges without being subjected to entrance examinations that have over the years displayed a want of credibility, validity and reliability, to mention but these few;
§ That the Senate of the University of Bamenda should base its consideration of equivalence for admission into that citadel of learning on certificates in the English-speaking system, so that the products should be of unimpeachable Anglo-Saxon pedigree, like obtains in the Anglo-Saxon University of Buea.
§ The venerated Bernard Fonlon of blessed memory in one of his write-ups quotes an ancient Roman sage, Cicero, who thought there was no greater or better gift to be offered the Republic than the proper teaching and instruction of the youths, than quality educational training given these future leaders. Therefore, a national policy of excellent education and sound scholarship can be conveniently seen as the impregnable future fortifications of that nation against the multifarious problems that plague it on a daily basis. We cannot therefore be happy or sit quiet when we realise that the education being offered English speaking youths whom we represent is by design shoddy and substandard. We therefore insist that the concerned Ministries should take decisive steps to solve the above anomalies and injustices if love for the Fatherland must remain a meaningful, lofty drive.
Done in Yaounde, this 11th Day of December 2013.
CC.
The Minister of Secondary Education;
The Minister of Higher Education.
Tuesday, December 24, 2013
Col 3:4 When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory. Christ appears in your life right here, right now: one nanosecond after you believe and confess that Jesus is Lord.
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On Saturday, June 4, 2016 4:51 AM, 'Timothy Mbeseha' via ambasbay <ambasbay@googlegroups.com> wrote:
I thought each of the so called Cameroon State Universities has a separate decree of creation or birth certificate so to say. Where in the decrees creating Buea University, Bamenda University or any of the other state universities does the Minister derive the authority to regulate/harmonizes courses to be taken in all Cameroon state universities?
Mbeseha
On Saturday, June 4, 2016 7:19 AM, 'SAIDOU' via ambasbay <ambasbay@googlegroups.com> wrote:
I remember I once said in an official meeting that Cameroon is practicing a Cameroonian version of the LMD, and I waS TOLD TO SHUT UP.
In the Cameroon tertiary education system we have one nonesense, one abberation, called M1 and M2. Because it is still done in France.
If Cameroon can still maintain what they call ''probatoire'', which has no place in the anglosaxon system, I can understand why our universities think we can issue a diploma called M1, in the BMD system.
Another abberation is to allow students, even today, do a Masters in FOUR YEARS!!!! I have students who registered in M in 2012, today 2016 they have not yet graduated.
What do we want to harmonize in Cameroon? What is harmonization?
- lifting the francophone system up to the anglophone system?? or
- lifting the anglophone system down to the francophone system???
SAIDOU NCHOUAT SOULE
University of Yaounde I,
Yaounde, Cameroon
237 699 91 69 34
237 242 81 91 10
mayouasule@uy1.uninet.cm
University of Yaounde I,
Yaounde, Cameroon
237 699 91 69 34
237 242 81 91 10
mayouasule@uy1.uninet.cm
De : "Ofege Ntemfac ntemfacnchwete@gmail.com [cameroon_politics]" <cameroon_politics@yahoogroups.com>
À : ambasbay <ambasbay@googlegroups.com>; africanworldforum <africanworldforum@googlegroups.com>; cameroon_politics <cameroon_politics@yahoogroups.com>; CAMNETWORK list <camnetwork@yahoogroups.com>; "globalcameroun@yahoogroups.com" <globalcameroun@yahoogroups.com>; FREE AMBAZONIANS <FREE_Ambazonians@yahoogroups.com>; Southern Cameroon <southerncameroons@yahoogroups.com>; edo_global <edo_global@yahoogroups.com>; SDF <cameroons_sdf_party@yahoogroups.com>
Cc : NIgerianWorldForum <NIgerianWorldForum@yahoogroups.com>; "237medias@googlegroups.com" <237medias@googlegroups.com>; sdf-forum <sdf-forum@yahoogroupes.fr>
Envoyé le : Samedi 4 juin 2016 8h54
Objet : [cameroon_politics] COLONIZATION: All Heads of Departments (HODs ) of the University of Buea (UB) and Bamenda (UBa) said NO to harmonization. The Minister of Higher Education
In a late afternoon move on Friday June, 3rd 2016, all Heads of Departments (HODs ) of the University of Buea (UB) and Bamenda (UBa) said NO to harmonization. The Minister of Higher Education, Prof Jacques Fame Ndongo looked visibly shocked that lecturers from these two universities stood their grounds in Yaoundé and spoke with one voice. They told the Minister who had used the LMD as an excuse to call for harmonization that the Anglophone system remains the best and if there is a need for any harmonization, then the Francophone universities in the country must go the Anglophone way.
God is still saying something.
The Cameroun government has been planning for years to harmonize academic programmes in the Cameroons state universities. Such a move received fierce…
bareta.press
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Posted by: Ofege Ntemfac <ntemfacnchwete@gmail.com>
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