Cameroon keeps extending deadline for GCE registration

The Cameroon General Certificate of Education, GCE Board Council, in an extraordinary session on March 3, in the conference hall of the Board’s head office, Buea, among other resolutions, extended the deadline for GCE registration to March 20.

This is the third time the deadline has been pushed forward, largely due to the ongoing teachers’ strike and the Anglophone Crisis which has paralysed schools in the Southwest and Northwest Regions.

After deliberations that took close to seven hours, the session attended by the statutory members of the Board and representatives of trade unions, namely; Tameh Valentine, President of the Teachers Association of Cameroon, TAC, and the Acting Secretary General of the Cameroon Teachers Trade Union, Semma Valentine, the Council “unanimously agreed” to:

“(1) Appeal to parents, students and other education stakeholders to effectively take their children back to school on Tuesday March 7 2017 for those who have not done so.

(2) Call all Education Secretaries of both lay private and confessional schools to disseminate this information, calling back students to their various schools by Tuesday, March 7, 2017.

(3) Congratulate parents, candidates and Chiefs of Centre for undertaking the registration exercise as the tradition of the Board holds; and in this light authorise the Registrar of the Cameroon GCE Board to publish all data on the 2017 Examinations organised by the Board.

(4) Exceptionally, authorise the Registrar of the GCE Board to reopen registration in all centres to cater for Extra Late Registration that will end on March 20, 2017 at 2pm.

(5) Reiterate the position of H.E the Minister of Secondary Education that, in consonance with UNESCO principles and rules, there will be no Blank Academic Year in Cameroon this year; and, therefore, calls on candidates, teachers and parents to continue preparations for all certificate examinations organised by the GCE Board.”

In a question and answer session, the Council answered questions from journalists among which were the tactics to be used in order to complete the syllabus and maintain the GCE’s standards. The Registrar of the Board stated that the lost days will be covered effectively by the pedagogues. He also remarked that the GCE examination timetable can be adjusted to give the candidates time to cover the syllabuses.

The Chairman of the GCE Board Council, Prof. Peter Abety asserted that they do not want to compromise the standards of the GCE, reason why they are appealing to teachers and parents to make it possible for schools to begin effectively. He mentioned that the Board will not want to pretend about what has been going on in the Anglophone community.

The Board Chairman of the also mentioned that in order to maintain the standards of the GCE board, students have to be tested on the whole syllabuses and not just part, reason why schools have to begin as soon as possible. He went on to not that, all the other classes have to resume too and not just the examination classes because the GCE syllabuses begin from other previous classes.

The TAC, Tameh Valentine said, the strike has been in gestation for too long, and that teachers have every reason to be in school, because some of their demands have been made.

Cameroonpost