Stakeholders in the education sector have reflected on setting up a digital system to issue end-of-course certificates to students.

They carried out the reflections during a one-day workshop in Yaounde on October 13, presided over by the Minister of Secondary Education, Professor Nalova Lyonga.

During the workshop, it was revealed over 900,000 end-of-course certificates are lying in wait at various schools as well as regional and divisional delegations.

The workshop held by video conference was attended by school principals, pedagogic inspectors, divisional and regional delegates, and other education stakeholders who were tasked to improve measures to see that owners of these certificates withdraw them.

To avoid such problems in the future, they discussed the modernization of the issuance of secondary education certificates by digitalising the process.

According to the Minister of Secondary Education, digitalizing the process of issuing the certificates will offer more credibility to the document and help in its storage.

As to the procedure, the Inspector General at the Ministry of Secondary Education, Fidelis Etta said, efforts are being made to ensure students have a unique number which they will use throughout their studies. He said the process starts with updating and digitalizing the school maps before issuing the unique identification number to the students which will be easy in tracking certificates. In addition, the process will help students to easily consult their results online and completely knock off unscrupulous persons specialized in producing fake certificates.

According to Fidelis Etta, the process will equally resolve the delays in issuing certificates to persons who want to travel abroad for further studies.

But before this new digital procedure comes into play, the secondary education stakeholders across the country need to step up efforts to see that the pending certificates are retrieved by the owners who are still reluctant.