Jacques Fame Ndongo, Minister of Higher Education has signed an order creating a department of French Modern Letters in the Higher Teachers Training College, of the University of Bamenda, commonly known by its French language abbreviation, ENS.

The decree was signed on February 8. We gathered that the creation of the department is the implementation of one of the agreements protesting Anglophone teachers and government settled on during negotiations in Bamenda.

Reports say the agreements were not made public because of the members of the inter-ministerial committee set up to identify and solve the teachers’ problem. But we learned the creation of the French Modern Letters department in ENS was one of the committee’s to the first group of problems.

This group of problems, we gathered, were listed as “poor output of learners due to lack of mastery of language of instruction; poor mastery of English language by Francophone teachers in their specialty; poor mastery of subject matter.

About the creation of the creation of the French Modern Letters, department in ENS, Nformi Sonde Kensai, teacher and journalist at The Post newspaper wrote: “recommendations/proposals of the adhoc committee to resolve the problems listed in this first group were that the Minister of Secondary Education should continue with the ongoing redeployment of teachers of technical education and should extend the process to that of secondary general education.

The committee proposes that the Minister of Higher Education forwards to the Prime Minister, Head of Government its request for: a) creation of another Higher Technical Teacher Training College (ENSET) for the Francophone subsystem of education; b) a Higher Institute of Engineering and Technology for the English subsystem of education which will follow the BMD system. The Committee also proposes that a Department of French be created in the Higher Teachers’ Training College (ENS) Bamenda by the Minister of Higher Education as soon as possible.”

Section two of the order creating the department in application of decree No2011/045 f March 8, 2011, states that the department can be subdivided into as many units and laboratories, in respect of existing specialisations on the proposal of the Vice- Chancellor.