New appointment at the Ministry of Education
New appointment at the Ministry of Education
A new appointment has been made to the Cameroonian Ministry of Education. The principal of the Bepanda high school has been appointed regional delegate for secondary education in the Littoral
Dame Thamar Eboa Ndengue has been promoted to regional delegate of MINESEC in the littoral region by Minister Nalova Lyonga. Until then, she was principal of the bilingual high school of Bépanda in the 5th arrondissement of the city of Douala.
Her record speaks for itself, she has raised this high school to the first rank of public establishments classified by the baccalaureate office with a success rate of 87% according to the March 2022 ranking.
Secondary education: the northern region sacrificed, a diary strips Nalova Lyonga
Of the ten regions in Cameroon, 04 are officially considered to be Priority Education Zones, namely: the Far North, the North, Adamaoua and the East. The State of Cameroon having made the bitter observation that these areas were lagging behind in terms of under-education compared to other regions, decided to provide particular support to the latter, with the aim of enabling them to catch up with this glaring delay which we will save by not giving the causes here. State measures concern at the structural level; The creation of schools, their openings; at the infrastructural level, the construction of classrooms, multimedia rooms, administrative blocks, the provision of tables and benches, the development of play areas, toilets, libraries, office, pedagogical and didactic equipment, the assignment of or transfer in large numbers of teaching staff and members of the administration without forgetting the gratification and stimulation of learners so that they are more interested in education.
However, beyond this battery of impressive measures on paper, then implemented on the ground, it must be recognized that in recent years, the State has had more and more difficulty in fulfilling and keeping to its commitments at the time. And this because of certain flaws and their corollaries of avatars that it would be important to point out here with force. administration without forgetting the gratification and stimulation of learners so that they are more interested in education.
However, beyond this battery of impressive measures on paper, then implemented on the ground, it must be recognized that in recent years, the State has had more and more difficulty in fulfilling and keeping to its commitments at the time. And this because of certain flaws and their corollaries of avatars that it would be important to point out here with force. administration without forgetting the gratification and stimulation of learners so that they are more interested in education.
However, beyond this battery of impressive measures on paper, then implemented on the ground, it must be recognized that in recent years, the State has had more and more difficulty in fulfilling and keeping to its commitments at the time. And this because of certain flaws and their corollaries of avatars that it would be important to point out here with force. State finds it more and more difficult to fulfill and keep to its commitments at the time. And this because of certain flaws and their corollaries of avatars that it would be important to point out here with force. State finds it more and more difficult to fulfill and keep to its commitments at the time. And this because of certain flaws and their corollaries of avatars that it would be important to point out here with force.
For this, we could note the untimely interference of certain politicians who have “long arms day and night” and who lead those responsible to take irrational, homing and very often fanciful decisions, particularly in terms of the creation of establishments. school. You will therefore see the birth like mushrooms of establishments in the same villages.
Take for example in the Mbéré department, Adamaoua region, there are three establishments in two villages barely 6 km apart in which two CES and a CETIC have been created for a population of approximately 3,000 souls and as a consequence the CETIC, however created, has never opened since 2014, for lack of students. However, 25 km away in the town of Meiganga, the authorities in charge of the education sector and some local sons of good faith through their association ASDDEM (Association for the Development of the Department of Mbéré), are going out of their way to vain so that Yaoundé grants another additional establishment to curb the crowds. Because those that exist are increasingly overwhelmed with overstaffing.
Similarly, we can talk about whimsical assignments without really taking into account the grievances and needs of the field, channeled faithfully via the departmental and regional delegations. It’s a bit like deciding to build a tennis court with millions in a village that only requires a borehole and whose populations are dying for lack of drinking water. So you have the transfer (assignment) of literary teachers where we need science teachers and vice versa.
Alongside this, you have establishments with the headteacher as the only permanent teacher, such as at the CETIC in Gbazer, who is himself obliged to bend over backwards or to resort to the poor populations to have a few temporary workers. Worse still, you therefore have individual contractors who have not been molded to the new teaching system in force called APC (Approach by skills) and very often find it difficult to practice teaching-learning activities according to the rules of art by making it easier for learners to acquire scholarly knowledge, know-how and interpersonal skills.
At the end, you will therefore have success rates below expectations despite the good will of the students and the teaching staff and the administrative officials. We do not forget that some teachers sent to these ZEPs spend months or even several years before receiving their salaries, like our compatriot of late memory Hamidou (10 years old) who passed from life to death teaching without however taste the fruit of his hard work.
In addition, beyond the managerial and organizational concerns in the management of personnel, we must add a glaring absence of classrooms which leads the heads of establishments beyond the texts to do with the context by dividing the rooms of classes by plywood, by partitioning the classrooms and by transforming the empty spaces between these rooms into a new classroom, no need to tell you that in some establishments, classes are held under the trees in the open air, fault of rooms. To solve the problem related to the absence of administrative blocks, some heads of establishments transform a classroom into several boxes separated from the plywood, each box thus becoming an office for the heads of departments (provisorate, censorship, general supervision, stewardship …) .
Similarly, because of the absence of bench tables, students are forced to take lessons sitting on the floor, on the stones for some, for the luckiest, they sit at 05 or even 07 per table-bench . The poorly laid out playgrounds compete in skill with the ridges of potatoes in the neighboring fields. The didactic and pedagogical material missing the teaching staff is forced to do with the means on board. The absence of electricity, boreholes, roads, telephone network, dwelling house, insecurity, medical care center, food shortage, are the daily routine of the teachers encountered in these ZEPs. even 07 per table-bench. The poorly laid out playgrounds compete in skill with the ridges of potatoes in the neighboring fields. The didactic and pedagogical material missing the teaching staff is forced to do with the means on board. The absence of electricity, boreholes, roads, telephone network, dwelling house, insecurity, medical care center, food shortage, are the daily routine of the teachers encountered in these ZEPs.
even 07 per table-bench. The poorly laid out playgrounds compete in skill with the ridges of potatoes in the neighboring fields. The didactic and pedagogical material missing the teaching staff is forced to do with the means on board. The absence of electricity, boreholes, roads, telephone network, dwelling house, insecurity, medical care center, food shortage, are the daily routine of the teachers encountered in these ZEPs.
Spread all the evils that undermine their lives and working conditions of these teachers in these regions could take us days. The nagging question that torments our minds is: Why were the northern and eastern regions stripped of their educational personnel when these regions are supposed to be “privileged” since they are ZEPs? How can we further pedagogically damage areas already damaged by under-education? Whose fault is it and how do you get out of it? We are not going to blame everything on the State, however it has a very great responsibility in this rigmarole and sinister, iniquitous and even dehumanizing situation because it is it which thinks up the development plans, is responsible for implementing them via its decentralized structures and manages the human resources of the education sector.
It is indeed Yaoundé that does everything, decides everything. How can you blame a teacher who has spent more than 10 years in Kombo Laka, a village rich in mining resources (gold, diamonds, iron…exploited by the Chinese), but which lacks everything (light , drilling, bridge over the Lom, road, security post, telephone network…) and who decides to be transferred elsewhere? Especially since he sees how his young colleague who, barely out of school, just came to take service and was immediately transferred to town? Can a teacher who works in good conditions seek to go elsewhere? A teacher who sees young people barely out of training schools,
The simple fact of attending seminars in the city and being challenged in a mocking way by its promoters of the cities “Teachers with a rural vocation” frustrates more than one and also leads them to migrate to urban areas since there is no a priori teachers condemned to work in rural areas (Darack, Moloundou, Yamba, Yamboya, Kolofata, Dargala, Kalfou Sonkolon and those condemned to practice in urban areas (Yaoundé, Douala, Bafoussam…). We must also note that the teaching body is filled with opportunists who have just come to seek registration and who refuse to work in these ZEPs, preferring the cities, giving themselves the means to fulfill their wishes through the counters installed in the management services of teaching staff.Solutions to control the situation Beyond the surgery without anesthesia carried out to know and understand the situation and the underlying reasons for the massive departures of teachers from the ZEPs to the metropolises (urban areas), we offer some solutions for getting out of crises:
– The establishment of an urgent plan for the development of ZEPs, Priority Education Zones, with the backdrop of the development of (roads, classrooms, boreholes, light, electronic network, health center, security, residential houses, etc.
– Decentralization of human resource management at the local level, regional and departmental delegations which are better equipped to carry out transfers, deployments, redeployments of personnel sent from training schools.
– Grant a special bonus to teachers in ZEPs, areas at risk.
– Redeploy teachers who have already worked for more than 5 years in an establishment in accordance with the texts in force. A kind of rotation.
– Decongest teaching staff in urban areas, particularly in Douala and Yaoundé, since there are too many teachers in these cities who are underemployed (04 hours of lessons for some, i.e. one day/week of work) while there is a great lack of it elsewhere.
– Revise upwards the financial support of the central service to the decentralized services (regions), because it is unfair that Yaoundé retains 85% of the resources and that barely 15% go there while the bulk of the work is carried out in the field in establishments and not in air-conditioned offices.
– Village chiefs and elites in the ZEPs be more involved in parent-teacher associations in order to provide all-round support to teaching staff,
Some associations like the ASDDEM (Association for the Development of the Department of Mbéré), the Association of Former Students of High Schools and Colleges are already doing it with convincing results. We humbly believe that these measures will go a long way in solving the problems encountered in our priority education zones.
