Rename GCE Board to Anglophone Exam Board - Teachers' Unions

Three teachers' trade unions have launched a campaign for a change of name from Cameroon General Certificate of Education, GCE Examinations Board, to Cameroon Anglophone Examinations Board. This change of name, the trade unions say, will enable the Board to take full charge of exams in the Basic Education and other sectors within the Anglophone Sub System of Education.

The teachers’ trade unions asking for the change include Presbyterian Education Authority Teachers Trade Union, PEATTU, Catholic Education Workers Trade Union, CEWOTU, and Teachers Association of Cameroon, TAC.

They unions took the stance following a joint meeting of the National Presidents and their close collaborators on June 27. Afu Stephens Kwah, President of PEATTU, briefed the Cameroon Journal on decisions arrived at during the meeting. He said the objective of the meeting was to review the just ended 2014/2015 academic year and to appraise the state of education and educational policy in Cameroon.

The meeting, Afu said, observed that the organization of examinations for Basic Education is sloppy. As a result, he said, the trade unionists agreed that “advocacy be stepped up for examination departments to be created within the structures of the Cameroon GCE Board to take charge of Basic Education and other sectors, and that the name be changed to Cameroon Anglophone Examination Board.”

Afu said this change of name will guarantee that examinations of Basic education like the Common Entrance into secondary and technical schools, and the First School Leaving Certificate are organized by the Board.

The PEATTU leader said the meeting urged government to sincerely do something to develop technical education within the English Sub System. This could be done, he said, “by inviting technical education specialists from Anglophone countries in the West, like was done when Canadians and French came to develop the brand of francophone technical education that is being translated and mistranslated to take care of Anglophone needs in the sector.”

Candidates of English expression in Cameroon have suffered setbacks during some exams like the entrance into the Mutengene Police College, and entrance exam into the Higher Technical Teachers Training College of the University of Bamenda. The setbacks were as a result of poor translation of questions which were originally set in French and translated into English for Anglophone candidates.

Anglophones have always cried foul against such practices and have even gone ahead to advocate for the GCE Board to be given the powers to handle all such exams for the interest of speakers of the English language. These calls as usual, have always fallen on deaf ears.

According to Afu, the three teachers’ trade unions also put their weight behind the Anglophone Common Law Lawyers, who recently “spoke out courageously in defence of the English sub System of Education in Cameroon.”