BAMENDA, CAMEROON – Mbi Nfor, a parent from Bamenda, the capital of Cameroon’s Northwest region, kept her 4-year-old son home for a few days after school resumed in September to make sure the Ministry of Basic Education would not shut it down.
“I had paid my child’s fees before I heard on the streets and then on radio that the Ministry of Basic Education was shutting down many schools for failing to meet some requirements by the ministry,” she says.
Nfor says she has not yet seen the list of the schools that the ministry has banned. But she is sure the school her child is enrolled in is authorized because officials from the ministry’s local delegation have not come to close it.
The Ministry of Basic Education is shutting down schools operating without proper paperwork, curriculum and infrastructure throughout the country. Although some applaud ministry efforts to improve education in Cameroon, administrators and parents ask why the ministry did not step in before the school year started. Now, students and teachers must find new schools. As the ministry works to ensure schools comply with requirements, officials advise parents on how to identify accredited schools.
Youssouf Adjidja Alim, Cameroon’s minister of basic education, signed an initiative in June to shut down nursery and primary schools not in compliance with the ministry, according to a release posted on notice boards at the ministry’s divisional and regional offices. The ministry has shut down approximately 800 schools throughout five of Cameroon’s 10 regions so far, and the process is ongoing.
The Northwest region of Cameroon registered the highest number of schools operating without proper paperwork and curricula standards, according to ministry notices posted at its regional delegation. Ministry officials closed 370 nursery and primary schools throughout the region.
The ministry is shutting down clandestine schools to guarantee quality education for pupils, says Clement Angwafor, divisional delegate for the Ministry of Basic Education in the Mezam division of the Northwest region.
“Government took moves to ban schools because most of the schools were functioning without respecting the laid-down norms,” he says.
He says these schools lacked government recognition, infrastructure and learning materials.
“When we moved out to the field, we realized that there are schools that operate in people’s living room, so it’s school by day, proprietor’s home by night,” Angwafor says. “There are some with no didactic materials. There are some nursery schools that even close at 2 p.m., which is not supposed to be the case.”
Other schools affected by the closure were those that did not teach the complete, approved curriculum, Angwafor says.
“With all these irregularities, the Ministry of Basic Education had to step in,” he says.
Stephen Afu, president of Presbyterian Education Authority Teachers Trade Union, which manages the network of Presbyterian schools and teachers in the country, says the education sector is becoming lucrative, so many people are venturing into it for greed rather than a desire to educate.
He says that in almost every neighborhood in Bamenda, there is a primary school collecting money from parents without providing appropriate structures or securing government authorization.
Although some administrators and parents are glad for the intervention in order to improve the quality of their children’s education, others criticize the timing.
“The move by the government is a good initiative that will bring sanity into the sector,” says Peter Ngang of Bambili, a town in Mezam, whose child’s school was closed.
But Ngang says that the timing is inappropriate because the schools have been running, and some have graduated pupils with their First School Leaving Certificate. The pupils who received their certificates will be able to keep it, so it’s contradictory that the schools are no longer good enough for others, Ngang says.
Also, many school administrations had already collected tuition fees from parents before the ban, he says. Now, parents must look for new schools for their kids and buy new uniforms.
Afu also questions the timing.
“What beats my imagination is what has caused the administration to investigate further into the matter just now,” he says. “One thing that is very clear is that some of the officials in the ministry are proprietors of private schools in the country, and this move is not only to check illegal schools but also to check competition against their schools.”
While Angwafor of the Ministry of Basic Education insists that the government’s sole motivation is the quality of education, Afu says some schools, like one that he manages, have been banned on technicalities.
“Sixteen years after creation of Presbyterian School Nighonitekoh in Pinyin village, the school was banned due to lack of some documents,” Afu says.
He says the school, where various pupils had graduated with First School Leaving Certificates issued by the government, had followed protocol.
“It was due to lack of proper follow-up by the supervisors in charge of regulating the sector,” he says. “At the time of creation, some documents were supposed to be put in place, which were done, no doubt, but were not properly followed up.”
Afu says that the Parent Teacher Association arranged for students who had already paid their fees to transfer to other Presbyterian schools.
“The school has been sealed this academic year, and the 100 pupils in the school relocated to other schools,” Afu says.
Afu, who manages Presbyterian schools east of the town of Bamenda, says the network will ensure employment for the teachers who have lost their jobs at the closed school.
“The teachers will be redeployed to other schools since they are recruited by the Presbyterian mission,” he says.
But other teachers won’t be as lucky.
“This is not the case with other private schools, whose teachers will be unemployed,” Afu says. “Automatically, they are redundant because of the ban in the schools where they were employed.”
Angwafor says that some school proprietors are working on complying with the requirements of the Ministry of Basic Education.
But months into the current academic year, some of the banned schools have yet to comply. School administrators who try to operate in spite of the seal placed on their schools will be arrested, Angwafor says.
Angwafor says he sympathizes with the parents and pupils affected by the move. He cautions parents to always ask if a school is authorized by the state before enrolling their kids.
He says the best way for parents to avoid enrolling their children in clandestine schools, besides listening to radio announcements, is to consult the list of authorized schools at the Ministry of Basic Education’s regional and divisional delegations.
Meanwhile, the ministry is sending pedagogic advisers to counsel school proprietors and head teachers and to do field visits to ensure that pupils in the primary school are receiving quality education.
