Principals of Government Bilingual Secondary and High Schools in the Littoral Region have complained that the Anglophone crisis in the Northwest and Southwest regions affected both their schools and their work according to a report in one of the country’s leading English-language newspapers, The Post.

The reason the principals say is because they were compelled far into the 2016/2017 academic year to admit students who came in from the NW and SW regions where schools had closed due to the on-going crisis. The principals raised the concerns during a regional evaluation meeting of this academic year that is drawing to a close. The meeting which also saw the attendance of Pedagogic Inspectors, principals and other stakeholders, held at Lycee Jos in Bonanjo, Douala.

The principals said they admitted students from the NW and SW at the instructions of the Minister of Secondary Education, Jean Ernest Masena Ngale.  They added that Ngale handed them firm instructions that the students be given catch-up classes to put them at par with their mates whose classes had seen no interruptions. According to the different principals, most of the students who came from the two Anglophone regions were Form 5 and Upper Sixth students bracing for the GCE exams. They said that such students have now attained the same level of preparedness like their French-speaking mates, thanks to these special classes which were hurriedly organized for them in a few weeks.

All the school administrators claimed that their schools had adequately covered the school syllabus for 2017, adhering to the total number of hours recommended by UNESCO and that end-of-course classes like Form Five and Upper Sixth are now simply revising their notes.

The veracity of these claims remains questionable given that the principals could simply be avoiding sanctions from the Minister. They did point out that the students from the NW and SW had registered in their schools and so will be going back there to sit for the exams.

The Cameroon Journal‘s Ngala Hans reported on May 14, that most of the students ferried to the Littoral to take classes were mostly Francophone children whose parents work and live in either the Northwest or Southwest.