Education for all by 2015

The effervescence that has characterized the start of the 2014/2015 academic year in Cameroon has rekindled national consciousness to the very fact that if Cameroon is to become an emerging country by the year 2035, the government must invest enormously in this sector.

Particularly challenging is the fact that the country is battling to attain the millennium objective which emphasizes universal primary education for all by the year 2015.

While it is very obvious that attaining universal primary education is the baseline of creating more functional societies through education, there is no gainsaying the fact that post primary, tertiary and professional training in a country like Cameroon which is arguably sleepwalking to emergence in under 21 years from today are the cornerstone of this emergence.

In as much as it is prejudicial to tag “vision 2035 “ a pipe dream, the challenge of attaining the millennium development goal of providing primary education for all in the first quarter of this century is more daunting when we remind ourselves that 2015 is less than four months away from today.

Woe betide those doomsday prophets who would say not much has been done. Grounds have been covered in providing basic education especially when we look at the situation in the immediate post independence era and the African context where there are many other countries that are lagging behind Cameroon.

But common sense dictates that significant progress in the primary education sector could also mean increasing pressure in the secondary and tertiary education sectors.

This is evident in the fact that every academic year, new secondary schools are created in almost all the 360 subdivisions of the country. Newly created schools are always welcome, especially in the back country where many less opportune people dream of leaving a better world for their progenies through education.

But fresh empirical evidence points to the fact that the government has, to a greater extent, ended at the decrees creating these schools. The burden of providing infrastructure, teachers and an enabling learning environment for the younger generation, have been independent variables from the decrees.

This probably explains why Parent Teachers Associations, PTAs enshrined in school management statutes as affiliated and support structures have taken the destiny of the children in their respective communities into their hands by playing more proactive roles. Over the past few days, there have been debates and fireworks in the Cameroon media on the role of the PTA in our school management system.

The worries have been on the management of PTA funds which are often left in the hands of the executive members. Outright embezzlement, colluding and conniving between the PTA president and the school principals/head teachers who are statutory secretaries or outright wars when the duos fail to agree have been very topical.

In all the debate raging in the Cameroon media about the PTA, the government is faced with a war of extremes; on the one hand PTA executive members that have the latitude to embezzle as they like because government cannot directly influence the use of collected funds, and on the other hand, local communities of parents and teachers who are committed to improving the lot of the children in their communities through providing those facilities that the government cannot or refuses to provide after decreeing the creation of schools.

In both scenarios, the government has a case to answer because the state is the guarantor of education policies that ensure proper management and access to education for all Cameroonians irrespective of tribe, religion, region of origin, sex amongst others.

On a more positive note, a best practice example where PTAs can compliment government action in providing education to ordinary Cameroonians is Government Bilingual High School, Down-Town, Bamenda. Located on the slopes of Ayaba Hills, the school is about the second largest in the North West region, coming only after Government Bilingual High School, Bamenda-Ntamulung.

According to the principal of GBHS Down-Town , Patrick Nkwenti, the institution was first decreed into existence in about 2003, not long after the millennium objectives were also proclaimed. Patrick Nkwenti who has been at the helm of the school for the past five years explained that without the PTA, the school would have just been another decree institution, existing only on paper.

Though the school is one of the biggest government secondary institutions in the North West region, its report card is soul searching; of the forty six classrooms that it counts for the 2014/2015 academic year, forty two of them were constructed by the PTA across the years. This means the government can only boast of constructing four classrooms in more than a decade of existence.

Given that a secondary school classroom costs about 9 million, it means that the school’s PTA has spent FCFA 378 million as compared to FCFA 36 million from the government.

Secondly the school’s PTA has equally constructed four science laboratories for Computer studies, Chemistry/Biology, Physics and Food and Nutrition. Take away the PTA and GBHS Ntamulung will have no laboratory. The only other offer from the government in this direction has been to create a Food and Nutrition examination testing centre.

With a student intake of over 3500 students, GBHS Downtown counts a teaching staff of over 150 teachers. But Patrick Nkwenti holds that this is grossly insufficient especially given that the class of bilingual students in both the Anglophone and francophone subsystems of education is getting to lower sixth and premiere this academic year. To upset this difference, the school PTA is employing thirty five more teachers for the 2014/2015 academic year.

The administrative block remains a mockery with the school principal locked up in a cubicle in the name of an office; and the eleven Vice Principals sharing plywood partitioned sitting rooms with discipline masters.

Though the GBHS Downtown is surrounded by three police stations, notably the Special Branch, Judicial police and Public security police stations, Patrick Nkwenti explains that security is still a major challenge given that students have created footpaths that are not generally safe.

This has led to the harassment and even rape of some students. Reinforced security he added has led to the arrest and prosecution of some of these miscreants. Given that the schools is located on a hillside, there has been the challenge of constructing sporting infrastructure .

The school’s PTA is seriously looking at how this challenge can be handled. In the 2014/2015 academic year returning students in the school are paying a PTA levy of 10,000FRS while new students are paying FCFA 25,000.

The success story of the PTA of GBHS Downtown, Bamenda raises the question as to what the government does in schools beyond signing decrees of creation and appointing officials.

If the North west Region’s second largest government school has been constructed almost entirely by the PTA, it means that many more schools in the suburbs are only paper creations and do not actually exist physically. This also means that where PTAs have failed, the communities have schools only on paper, not physical schools. Examples abound in the North West.

More than ever before, the Cameroon government is challenged to move from the creation of schools to the construction of schools. Above all, the two ministries in charge of primary and secondary education should be able to tell Cameroonians how many classrooms they construct every academic year and where these classrooms are constructed.

Better still, the government could adopt a policy of “development of schools for the people by the people” through the transfer of funds meant for schools to the respective PTAs for better management so that they do not end up in private pockets as is the case now.

If this is not possible, then these schools can simply be created and called community schools, rather than government schools so that the beneficiary communities should know that the responsibility of construction lies squarely on them.

This is even feasible when we look at the much talked about decentralization which itself is more on paper.