GCE Board Mired In Confusion As Practical Begins Today

Officials of the Cameroon General Certificate of Education (GCE) Board have been plunged in total confusion, following the unprecedented commencement of the practical phase of the exams today.

The officials are battling between registering students for the exams and administering the practical phase of examination to already registered students, according to the directives of the Minister of Secondary Education, Jean Ernest Massena Ngalle Bibehe.  

Minister Ngalle Bibehe on Saturday, May 13, stunned education stakeholders in the North West and South West Regions of Cameroon, when he averred that candidates, who have registered for this year’s examination, have the latitude to change their centres and write at any centre of their choice.

As if to add salt to an already excruciating sore, the Minister further instructed that even candidates who have not registered for the exams should be allowed to do so and sit for the exams on the same day.

The Minister’s instructions have met firm criticisms from pedagogues of the Anglo-Saxon System of Education, who see it as carnage on the most cherished and orderly organised GCE exams. 

According to one of the pedagogues who spoke to Cameroon Concord on condition of anonymity, “the Minister’s instructions are going to create more problems than solve them.

“With such  a method, the GCE Board would not even know how many candidates are supposed to sit for the exams in the O or A Levels, how many candidates will write in a particular examination centre, the number of question papers to be printed and the number of invigilators to send in a particular centre,” the Pedagogue said.

According to him, such haphazard manner in organising an exam can only breed ground insecurity and examination malpractices.

“The GCE exams are often well organised, after registration, candidates are issued students’ slips by the Board to ease identification and avoid impersonation, but with the current chaotic registration method, fraud and impersonation will be rampant,” our source stated.

Since Anglophone teachers downed their tools on November 21, 2016, in protest of what they termed the bastardisation of the Anglo-Saxon System of Education, Government has been making frantic efforts for pupils and students to go back to school.

Minister Ngalle Bibehe’s move is to accomplish this task in other to avert a blank academic year.