Press Hour of July 28, 2024
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00:00:30Welcome to today's edition of the program. On Press R, we do not suppress our emotions. What we do is that we let our good sense lead our debate and discussion on Press R. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome once again.
00:00:52The debate whether or not examination is the true test of knowledge has a space in empirical research. The finest minds today questioning whether examination is the true test of knowledge went through the same process of knowledge acquisition, assessment, and certification with examination as the yardstick.
00:01:14This debate gains steam by the day because standards are falling. Standards are being questioned. The utility aspect of knowledge, which is the finality of knowledge acquisition, is sandy. It is wavery.
00:01:44Standards of education getting better or getting worse in Cameroon. That's going to be our focus on today's edition of Press R.
00:02:07And for now, we have two guests. In the studio, we have Professor Willie Brunzenqua, who is the President of Heritage Higher Institute of Peace and Development Studies. Prof, you're welcome.
00:02:20Well, thank you, Kilian. Permit me to say thank you for inviting me and I wish the viewers a good viewing. The educational process in Cameroon seems to be on a standstill and I'm glad that we are supposed to do a dissection of what is and what is supposed to be done.
00:02:47Permit me to say that I'm here as President of the Comparative Education Society in Africa, which is very interested in what comparisons should be done between the educational systems here and there and what should be done to improve on what we have.
00:03:03Thank you very much for giving that detail, which is important, so related to the subject that we have on hand today. And permit me to introduce to you Mr. Sabun Hanfei. He is the Principal of St. Mark's English High School in Bandumu, Eseyounde. Am I right?
00:03:23You're welcome to press on.
00:03:53He has been my mentor. It's an opportunity to be on set on a national television side by side with him to construct the state. I find it an honor. And this is a clear indication that he has been doing a wonderful job. I believe there are hundreds and thousands of people like myself out there that has been trained by him. Prof, this is an honor. Thank you very much.
00:04:17From the way you speak, I think that he should also be honored. Just your introduction shows that Prof has done something we are going to see in this program that some other teachers have not done. That's exactly what I said. And in my introduction, I said thumbs up to those teachers, to those parents, to those institutions that still give us hope by doing the right thing, by producing products like you.
00:04:43Yes, thank you. Thank you once again for coming. But there's something I want to tell you, to share with you here. He has been your mentor, your father. But on the set here, you are a co-panelist with him. You should be yourself and even prove to him that yes, as we always say, parents say that if I ended at D, my child should end at E or beyond. That is what we expect from you.
00:05:08We are waiting for Ojon Stephen. Ojon Stephen is a publisher of the Median newspaper. He should still be on his way coming, the press man that we had on this panel.
00:05:38We want to tell the regional delegate that this program is live. If she wants to make such a decision, she should take time and do that early enough than to frustrate the guests and frustrate the program.
00:06:06Thank you very much. We await Ojon Stephen. Stephen, who is supposed to be on his way coming. But these very intelligent and high-level panelists we have here are going to keep you posted on this program.
00:06:21Now we're going to go into the press review that reviewed all the events that happened during the week.
00:06:37This week has been eventful, both at home and abroad, with a good number of events unfolding across various domains. Press men have worked tirelessly to replay these fast-paced developments to their audience.
00:06:53Let's begin with the news from the President of the Republic of Cameroon, who is in France for the Olympic Games. Cameroon Insider, in her second issue of the week, spotlights President Paul Brea and the First Lady in Paris, informing readers that the presidential couple was seen off at the airport by notable officials such as the Prime Minister, Chief Dr. Joseph Diangute, and the Secretary General of the Presidency, Ferdinand Ndongo.
00:07:20In the same vein, the national bilingual daily newspaper Cameroon Tribune describes the Paris Olympics as one of the most important sports competitions, as the presidential couple sojourned there to support the athletes who will be disputing medals in the various sports domains.
00:07:39Meanwhile, municipal updates links the head of state and his visit to Europe to the extension of mandates for municipal councillors. The 50-year-old Cameroon Tribune also taglines the extended term of office for municipal councillors, as they made known that a decree was signed by the President of the Republic on July 24, 2024, allowing them to extend sojourning from February 2025 to May 2026.
00:08:08Over to the Fair on Government Action, SAGO, which began and ended this week. The Guardian posts headlines on a conference on Friday, July 26, presided over by the Interim Minister of Mines, Professor Fou Kalistrous Gentry, who outlined the impact of their projects on citizens.
00:08:26Nga Christian's paper also expounded on the Minister of Communication's speech at the opening ceremony, which explains the government's efforts to improve better living conditions for her citizens. That sweeps us to aspects concerning the economy. The media and newspaper closely examines the issue of the current National Hydrocarbons Corporation, SNH, addressing speculations of possible ejection of the Director General from a seat they described as coveted.
00:08:55While the Guardian posts ex-raised the International Monetary Fund's directives in the transfer of idle funds between Quebec and SEDEC, these in a bid to debunk claims that the IMF has sided with Quebec.
00:09:09Municipal Updates on its part discusses the legal consultant Emmanuel Kedis' project to boost commercialization, innovation and creativity in Africa through its platform APIA Africa. There was a reason to dance for some within the week as the GCE results were released.
00:09:29The English Daily describes the drop in performance as slight, revealing that it has plunged by 6.5% compared to last year's session. The percentage passed this year is 60.08%.
00:09:44The Horizon captions on the release of the GCE results in a more serious tone, ending with an exclamation sign to underscore the gravity in the drop.
00:09:56For news out of Cameroon, Municipal Updates on Tuesday proposed an opinion journal to her readers, examining Biden's stepping out of election and what it means for democracy in Africa. These and more made news this week.
00:10:43The first thing that caught my attention was the President's visit to France to take part in the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games. I think the President attending in person is a true demonstration of his sportsmanship.
00:10:58And of course you agree with me that he's going to France not just for the love of Paris, but it is going to, if you look at the delegation he's taking along, you realize that you agree with me that we are going to feel the impact back home.
00:11:11Before you go to the second point, just note it, there was a summit, Olympic summit, with some heads of state, the United Nations Secretary General and some other officials that was focused on seeing how sports can be an engine for development.
00:11:36So you are okay with what you've said, so it's not just going to watch the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games, it is also to look at some of those things in the summit. Yes, your second point?
00:11:48Okay, the second thing that captured my attention was the fire disaster that swept away an entire family. It's an aspect that is recurring practically everywhere. We have fire fighting units in the country and possibly this fire disaster is recurring because maybe the units are focused only in particular areas.
00:12:13So it is really bad to know that an entire family was wiped out as far as fire incident is concerned.
00:12:43But the problem, the biggest problem they have when an incident like the one you're talking about occurs is that what immediately happens, the people instead of calling them first, before looking for alternative means, while waiting for them to come, the people get into action trying to help the situation and when it is out of hand, that is when they start calling and when they come they say you've come late.
00:13:10So the message he gives to the public is that immediately you see any fire, any incident of drowning, any such thing that requires their services, you call them first before you go to try to do whatever thing you are doing. And I take advantage of this to say the fire fighting brigades emergency number is 118. Yes, Prof?
00:13:35Well, I think what Mr. Sabu raised is very important. Each time the President moves out of the country with a strong delegation, the impact has to be felt because they are not going only just for sightseeing, they are going for politics, for economy, for social, reorientation of their policies vis-à-vis the country.
00:13:53I think one of the most interesting things to me would be the circle, bringing the different ministers together, ministerial departments together to do maybe evaluation, I should say, and promotion of whatever thing they do.
00:14:23Thank you very much, Prof, and at this moment we are going to delve into our discussion.
00:14:53We are asking the question, are standards getting better or getting worse in education in Cameroon? That is where we begin. Beginning with you, Prof, how will you assess the standards? Are they getting better or they are getting worse in Cameroon? First, we are going to go into the reasons afterward.
00:15:23In general evaluation, you have to go segment by segment. Education will be an umbrella term. Is it under the Ministry of Employment and Vocational Training? Is it under the Ministry of Scientific Research, which is under education? Is it secondary education? Is it higher education? Is it sports and physical education? So education will be.
00:15:45So what I should be able to say is that in some areas of education in this country, the standards are really, really falling. Should I say they are stagnant? And in some areas, I think we see a few steps forward.
00:16:00Formerly, we used to have every year multiple schools being created in general education, but we have seen some sort of an increase with the current Minister of Secondary Education in technical education, technical and commercial education. So we are improving towards that direction.
00:16:19There is equally an improvement in higher education because of professionalization of higher education. But the speed break there would come when we have a multiplicity of these higher educations, which might not be strong enough to carry on the professionalization, which the Ministry of Higher Education is promoting.
00:16:43So I should say that in some areas, we are advancing. In some areas, we are stagnant. And in some areas, I think we are regressing based on the STS.
00:17:13So when we look at that, we can say there is something wrong.
00:17:39Well, there is something actually wrong. But when we do evaluation, we should expect that the results are either improved or the results drop. Permit me to take this opportunity to congratulate and encourage teachers, those who sacrifice their time on a daily basis to transform these minds to become much more responsible.
00:17:58I should also take the opportunity to congratulate parents who are doing everything possible despite the difficulties to ensure that their children have an education. And then to the students who passed in all the exams, we should wish them congratulations. And to those who failed, I think if they did not fail, if they did not try, they will not fail.
00:18:22So there is every reason to have tried and failed. I think there is also an experience. In all of that, we have had an education.
00:18:52The falling standards will be tackled from a holistic perspective.
00:18:57Exactly. And we jotted that down. We are going to look at the responsibility of the students, of the teachers, of the parents, and of the establishments themselves. Now, let me ask you the same question, Mr. Samuels. Are standards falling or are they rising? Is it getting worse or is it getting better?
00:19:22Thank you very much for that question. Just to cue off from where Prof ended, judging the standard of education in Cameroon will depend on two principal things, the curriculum that has been defined by the government and the result. Now, the government has defined, the different ministries involved in education have defined the curriculum.
00:19:44Now, the question is, is it properly interpreted by the different stakeholders? Is the knowledge and skills properly transferred to the students? Is the expected result acquired? It is the answers to this question that can enable us to know whether the standards are actually failing or not.
00:20:01Now, I want to say that there has been a considerable effort on the part of the government to uphold standards. Now, if you look very well, you realize that the government, this time the ministry in charge of education, is tilting towards professionalization, skill development, competency development.
00:20:20We have introduced the CBA, which is more of a competency-based approach, in order to enable our students to acquire the necessary skills so as to be able to address the life situations they face around. So, government, the curriculum is quite rich and considerable efforts have been made towards that direction.
00:20:40Then, if you look at the policy of digitalization, all of this is made by the government to keep pace to changing times and enable Cameroon to meet up with international standards. So, I strongly believe that efforts are being made.
00:20:55And if you look at also increased access to education, we have schools spread all over everywhere just to increase access, which was not the case before. Now, people used to travel kilometers looking for where to study. Then, the involvement of the private sector as well. The private sector has been accompanying the government in this direction, trying to create quality education.
00:21:22I think if you go to, especially in Anglophone regions, you realize that there are institutions that have been of standard producing quality results and trying as much as possible to meet up with the standards. So, the government effort to liberalize the sector and the coming in of the private sector in order to boost the system is quite an initiative we should appreciate.
00:21:47Now, I'm taking my breath because in the streets, someone listening to you, except they don't speak to you the way they speak to me, will say you sound too good to be true, as if there is no problem.
00:22:03Because this is what they generally say. We still apologize and we encourage those who are excellent, those who are fine, because we still have very fine minds that are fabricated in those schools. But, when we see so many failing.
00:22:33You cannot write a simple letter. So, that is the utility of knowledge that, yes, you are given knowledge. Is it getting to its finality?
00:22:46Well, I think here I was simply responding to your question as to the level of the standards, whether the standards are falling, whether they are not. So, I'm trying to look at the good things.
00:22:57Yes, you didn't talk about, you didn't actually, when you speak, you sound as I say, I want to repeat, too good to be true, that everything is good, encouragement this way, opening more that way, and then that children are getting knowledge.
00:23:14The point now is not whether they are getting knowledge. The point is whether that knowledge is useful and it is up to standard. That is exactly what we are. Since you've gotten into that part of the debate, let us get your opinion on that.
00:23:32Whether you are proud of 9, 8 out of 10 students you teach. If you are proud, then why do they fail the exams that you set? For example, let us just begin with the exams, which is the test, the official test that the country has, that it's around the world, it's examination until we change that. It is examination and examination is showing that more are failing.
00:23:58Like I said from the beginning, I was trying to look at the efforts first. What are the efforts being? Now, when we look at the effort, it does not mean that there are not challenges. There are enormous challenges and at the end of the day, if we want to try to balance our judgment, we realize that enormous efforts are being made both by the government, by the private sector, by the parents and even the students.
00:24:21But it does not mean that there are not challenges. We are going to also identify the challenges, which are possibly the reasons for the declining trend.
00:24:32Yes, Prof, a reaction to that before I open the new chapter.
00:24:37I think he is very right. He was trying to see, to the best of my appreciation, the legislative dispositions, the provisions, which have been put in place to actually encourage and improve on the education in the country.
00:24:53I think the point now is what is the dichotomy between those provisions which exist, which give the government, the private sector to operate and the reality in the different schools and the opportunities in the country.
00:25:09I would like to say that, I did say before, that it is improving to an extent. It is also declining and at some points it is stagnant.
00:25:18Permit me to say this. The Heritage University Institute decided to organize a competition on peace, bringing together 10 different schools and universities.
00:25:33Let me say that the first three students, the best students, came from 700 schools. I don't need to say from which schools those students came from.
00:25:43And when we had time to read over the essays of the first three students, I should say, the first student is in the University of Boya currently.
00:25:51The language that student wrote, from a private school in Yaoundé, you will not permit me to give the name of that school, I read it over and over and over whether I could identify one fault in English. I did not see.
00:26:06So what I want to use this example to get is that there are some schools and some students who imbibe some seriousness in what they are doing.
00:26:16But there are other schools which, I mean the proprietors, be it private, government schools, the principals, simply just want their academic year to come and go.
00:26:26But there are others who actually want to do real education, which is not only limited in the classroom. They really want to imbibe performance output.
00:26:34And so we want to say that it is falling in some schools where there is laissez-faire. It is serious in other schools where there is concrete action being put in place to push forward the agenda of the government.
00:26:50I will meet you the next time and ask you whether that particular student then marveled you. You have investigated and seen from which family that student came and the type of parenting the student has.
00:27:10In that case, we will be able to see whether it is the effort of the student or it is part of what the parents are doing, the teachers are doing, the student themselves are doing and the institution.
00:27:24You can take over but you answered this question, which is part of the in-depth analysis of what we are going to do here. What is the responsibility of the parents? But you can continue with your thought before you open that responsibility of the parents.
00:27:41I think the responsibility of the parent is very, very important. Permit me to say that this child is from Oku. This child has a peasant background. This child has a father, a primary school teacher.
00:27:56It isn't only dependent on the parent. It is also dependent on the interest of the child and how the school tinkers that child around to match what he gets, his interest, to the reality. I think it works. What is the role of the parents?
00:28:16I think the parents have a very, very serious role to play. There are parents who are very disciplined and they encourage discipline in their children. There are other parents who primarily suffer, who do not even want their children to work in the house, not less talking of working in school. There are some parents who want to intervene and even use corrupt practices to get their children go through.
00:28:43We see a situation where I say there is some sort of exaggerated human rights. Because some children don't go to school, they go to classes when they want, they go to the bars and drink, they do all sorts of nasty things, but they do not want such children to be punished.
00:29:03They don't even intervene. We have seen the minister, for example, sanctioning students and we have an outcry. Why should these children be sanctioned? Do we want results? I think if we want results, then there should be a basic code of conduct that the student should be able to. Your question was the role of the parent. The example I gave maybe is from a parent who is a teacher, but it's not all teachers.
00:29:32Maybe also, as you say, from a humble background, they make sure that they keep the child, the child also understands.
00:30:02And the school is only there to bring in and respect the curriculum. I think that is what we are struggling to see. Parents from very rich families sometimes are not very performant, not all. Students from very poor families, because they don't even have the means to pay basic school fees, cannot be able to be performant. But we are seeing that everything being equal.
00:30:21When the standards are laid down, the parents must be able to respect the basic canons of education as parents at home and encourage the teachers to follow up in the curriculum and get the schools. We have gotten exaggerated in discipline where the students don't even respect the teachers. We have many of the secondary schools, the children don't respect the teachers and it comes from home.
00:30:46So all of education, that education which I always say, which is not based in a classroom situation, starts from home. So when the students are not properly brought up at home, when they are not properly made to understand what should be at stake, they are going to be derailed.
00:31:06We are on the role of the parents. Mr. Asambu, Humphrey, are there some of those things that parents fail to do that Professor Uli Bratzinga did not mention?
00:31:36If today we are talking about falling standards, parents are largely responsible for that. The experience we have today is that many parents believe that the moment they get a child admitted in the school and pay fees, that is all, they disappear into thin air.
00:31:51Now the moment you identify abnormality with the child and invite the parent, they are never there. They are hustling and forget about the children. And what is even heartbreaking the most is that some of these parents are so protective. They protect their children at all levels and they can swear for the children. You hear a parent tell you that my child cannot do this, my child cannot do that.
00:32:13Whereas in school we are seeing something else. Of course. And I use this opportunity to tell parents that the children they have at home, when the children are at home, they are angels. They behave like angels. But the moment they step out of home, while in school or in the community, there is a different ball game.
00:32:43I remember when we were growing up, the moment you commit an offence in school, you are seriously punished and you make sure your parents don't get to know about it. Because the moment they get to know about it, they will not find out what happened and they punish you again. And the moment you commit an offence at home, your parents will punish you and instead again refer you to the teacher.
00:33:05So we are midway between when the teachers are hitting from school, the parents who are hitting from home. But today, the moment you correct a child in school, the parents will come up and castigate you and defend their child and claim that the child cannot do this, cannot do that. But meanwhile, it's not true. We deal with them on a regular basis. They spend more time with us and I must bet we master these children even more than their parents.
00:33:30They have multiple colours at home. They behave like angels. But back in school, there is a different ball game. But you see, in St Mark's English High School, we are conscious of these problems and we try to put in place strategies on how to overcome them.
00:33:46The first thing is that discipline is the bedrock of any academic success. And so we have reinforced our discipline with four discipline masters, a counselling department and we work in collaboration with parents, either organising regular meetings, have a WhatsApp chat group that we communicate with them. And personally, on a daily basis, I inform parents whether the child is in school or not.
00:34:08You are going to give us details of that and even give examples, given that you are an administrator. I told you we're going to look at the responsibility of the parents, of the students, of the institution, what you're talking about. Trust me, we're going to come to the institution, you will give us even examples about that. And I've not forgotten the teachers also. We're going to talk about that now.
00:34:32Just talking about parents, I want to close that chapter on parents, hoping that our parents are listening, are watching us and are probably taking note to know exactly that these children, they have a huge responsibility to keep them safe, sound, educationally.
00:35:02Of course, it's very important. I think one of the major reasons for this fall in the standard of education is access to telephone, things like telephone and internet and so on. So some of these parents who give out phones, it's true.
00:35:26When we're talking about digitalization here, we can't operate without the phone. But it's a question of how responsible are we in using these phones. And we realize that most of these students, even when the phone is acquired to help them carry out research or facilitate learning process, they divert into other things.
00:35:44That's why today you realize that most of our children are experts in all the social media handles like Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp. They're experts.
00:36:09Who is Shakespeare? Who is some of these very popular writers? They will not know. That's what you were doing. You were quoting books and their authors. Now let us go to teachers. We've talked about parents. We talked a bit about students.
00:36:31Now let's talk about the role of the teacher. What is the responsibility of the teachers in the standards that we think are generally falling, to use the word, because we have areas where some are stagnant. We have areas of improvement. We're going to begin with you this time.
00:36:50Practically, you realize that today almost everybody wants to be a teacher, maybe because of the economic situation of the country and the teaching job is the easiest to find. Now you agree with me that even those who are trained in professional schools as teachers, just a minor percentage of them actually have the passion for teaching.
00:37:11That's why if you go to most of our government schools around, you realize that they have deserted their work and they are busy teaching in private schools. So the economic situation of the country has been in such a way that people get into the teaching profession not because of the passion they have for teaching, but because it's a way of survival.
00:37:33Now in this case, at the end of the day, children entrusted into their hands end up being frustrated, especially in government schools. That's why we see most parents remove their children from government schools to send them to private schools where there's close follow-up and attention and availability.
00:37:50By the same teachers who have abandoned their workstation to elsewhere. I think the government is listening. The government has been following up, should increase the measures to make sure that the teachers in government schools that you're talking about do not abandon the children, do not abandon their work for some other thing.
00:38:09Because for one thing is true, teachers need more, but teachers have regular salaries, teachers have allowances more than so many other course that we have in this country. So it's good you raised that point. The next point, teachers.
00:38:26A good number of teachers, some teachers, maybe for one or two reasons, may not really carry out research in order to update themselves as far as the most recent teaching methodology is concerned. The absence of research is felt with the bad result we have out there.
00:38:48So it's quite disheartening on the part of the teachers who develop a kind of lukewarm attitude as far as their own work is concerned. It boils down to the same thing I said concerning lack of interest. Now it's just a question of maybe getting food on the table or getting matriculation as it is fondly referred to in Cameroon.
00:39:13Prof, a teacher, you've been a teacher at all levels, I should say, at all levels of education. Now I followed the results of the GCE and why not of other exams, public exams in Cameroon.
00:39:43You have a very low percentage. You should be ashamed and you should abandon the job.
00:39:56It's a very trying question, but if you permit me for a few seconds, I will get back to something. I was school principal for 15 years and I know that in discipline, the students hate when they invite their parents to school. That's the worst punishment to give a student.
00:40:16But like he was saying, sometimes when you invite those parents to school, they instead come and defend their children. So I want to use this opportunity to say, parents should always visit the schools and talk with the school administration in order to imbibe that discipline.
00:40:34They will know the teachers. I'm going to the question about the teachers. They will know the teachers who are teaching the children. They are going to do a follow-up and all of that. Now what about teachers who are not performant? I think he said that. What are these teachers teaching? In which schools? Public or private schools?
00:40:54What is the quality of the teachers who are being recruited in terms of the private schools? Do the proprietors simply want people to be in class or they actually want teachers? Do these proprietors organize seminars to retrain their teachers? There is a government. Actually, I know the government does some retraining.
00:41:14I want to think that it should, depending on what population size the class is, but it should be, I have always insisted that the strength of any teacher should be measured from the weakest student in class.
00:41:32A teacher should not go to class and he's solving mathematical problems. The first students who can answer the question, you stop at that. You should instead measure your strength by seeing that the worst student gets to above average. Therefore, any teacher who teaches and there is a nil, that teacher has a very serious problem with himself because he has not tried to transform the weak.
00:41:59I mean, even the best student has not been able to make it. And then what about the worst? Is it the blame? Should we blame the teachers? Yes and no. Yes, because it is his responsibility to be assessed because that is public assessment.
00:42:17If a teacher teaches and the students fail, publicly, he has been assessed to be a bad teacher. So, it only calls on such a teacher to sit up. It calls on the private school owners to know what type of, what quality of teachers they get. It calls on government to be able to get in refresher courses.
00:42:39And this brings me to what I have said in terms of comparative education. Be it private, lay private, mission schools, be it government schools, these teachers are training Cameroonians. And therefore, whenever the government is initiating seminars to train or retrain teachers, they should be able to invite teachers from the private sector as well.
00:43:05He said something very important. Those teachers might be busy elsewhere. And where they are supposed to be, as far as their stations are concerned, they put very minimal interest. Don't be surprised that in government schools, some of the teachers who have been called upon to teach might have their students fail.
00:43:25That same teacher would have his students pass in a lay private school because, of course, he has greater interest there. Some of those schools have been abandoned. I think there is no secret. Many of the schools have been abandoned. We have gone to a school, permit me not to call the name of the school, to recruit teachers to teach.
00:43:47Because all the teachers in the community, I should say, in my hometown, some of the teachers in some of the subjects have decided to stop teaching. Government has shut all the schools in Urum. I'm not only there. All of the schools in the conflict stress areas have had the schools abandoned by some of the teachers.
00:44:09So we are trying to say that in order to make sure that the teachers are more performant, in order to make sure that the students pass their exams and respect what curriculum we are trying to imbibe on them, there should be a holistic approach in order to salvage the declining situations of the nil percentages in some of the schools.
00:44:33Yes, and I know there are various ministers in charge of education from basic to secondary to high school whom I know personally and I know them to be people who are strict. They are listening to what you are saying and those teachers are not going to have it easy when this new school year starts come September.
00:44:57Now, in say 3 minutes, 1 minute, 30 seconds for each of you, you tell us this policy at a lower level that says no child should repeat a class. Is that not one of the factors that contribute to these standards because everybody let our people go?
00:45:25Ms. Killian, I think that's a very big, huge question that needs several hours to expand on that. Let me say that there is no collaboration within the educational sector in Cameroon, in all. There is a Center for National Education in the Ministry of Scientific Research.
00:45:43The different ministerial departments, there are research works which have been put in place where this research, the outcome of such research are not being implemented in the field because of lack of collaboration.
00:45:58I think if there was collaboration amongst the different ministerial departments in education, you see that experts have carried on research to prove that the idea of setting everybody passing to the next class is counterproductive.
00:46:14So if these research works are being consulted and implemented, I think we are going to see something else. My personal opinion is that it has increased the folding standard.
00:46:26The students who do not come to class, they know that they are going to move on to the next class. What efforts are they going to make? So we are saying that there should be some minimal sense of evaluation because people have said after all, evaluation or examination should not be the true test of knowledge, which I say no.
00:46:48Evaluation is the true test of knowledge. You can evaluate it practically, orally or in writing. There must be an evaluation. The teachers are almost always evaluated by the people. So there should be a way of evaluating students. There is no reason why a student should have 18 and go to the next class and a student has 5 and goes to the same class.
00:47:17Thank you very much. I think this issue of promoting all the students is one of the biggest problems that has contributed to this declining state of our result, our educational system.
00:47:35It is really bad because at the end of the day, students, the moment they are conscious of the fact that whether they work or not, they will be promoted to the next class, they will be promoted to the next class, you realize that at the end of the day, they stay home, they don't come to school, they don't respect instruction and they end up being a disaster. But it's just one of the problems.
00:47:54Now, as I said from the beginning, if you look at the curriculum, especially at the elementary level, if you judge a primary school pupil with just the size of the bag they carry, then you can imagine the number of subjects that are loaded and at the end of the day, these children are, what they say, a jack of all trades, master to none. So at the end of the day, then again you realize that there is this problem.
00:48:17Thank God the government reduced that into one subject, one textbook and the big bags that children used to carry of our children, that bag has reduced to a smaller bag.
00:48:29But there are just too many subjects that the mental age of the children cannot enable them to grab certain concepts. So it's still a major problem as far as that issue is concerned.
00:48:39If you look at this issue of skipping class, initially our primary school pupil used to have 7 years to write the Government Common Entrance and the First School Leaving Certificate examinations and during that period, some children used to write in class 6, sometimes hiddenly or even exposed.
00:48:56Now it was officially reduced to 6. Now some parents are forcing the children to write in class 5. Now at the end of the day, you find a child of 12, 13 years who is writing O Level, under normal circumstances in the past, that child should be starting from 1. Now you see the mental age and forcing them to go through such...
00:49:18And it continues, when that child gets to, from 4, the parents say she should register the child for the advanced, from 4, for the advanced level. They go to advanced level and they try to write even in lower 6.
00:49:33That's why when we receive most of these children, we realize that they are totally blank as far as language is concerned. We have to get teachers to teach them what building for them to catch up. So it is just one of the many problems that is contributing to this poor result.
00:49:50Then lack of reading culture. We have a generation of students who don't want to study. I remember when we were growing up, we used to take the lamp, this bush lamp to a neighboring primary school and spend the whole night studying. But today we have children who have basically everything, electricity, reading tables, everything. But no culture, no culture. The reading culture is basically absent.
00:50:12But if you ask them anything about X-BET, drug consumption, stars, footballs and music stars, they have every, they will tell you everything. Now that is the irony in the whole thing.
00:50:24Why not just divert that skill into the right quarters. Now we are going to talk about institutions. I promised you that we were going to handle those four aspects of learning, of education where you have to assess standards.
00:50:43Institutions. Now, beginning with you, I said you were going to, you already announced what your school is doing. Can you give us practical examples of discipline, of some other things that the institution is doing to make sure that students don't get astray, that standards are maintained?
00:51:13As far as the 2024 GC session was concerned, we had 95% for advanced level and 93% for all levels. And so the school is located in a very calm, quiet and conducive environment for studies to take place. This attractive nuisance is completely absent.
00:51:43And as I indicated, we work in collaboration with our parents to ensure that we hammer this issue of indiscipline. That is why the children cannot leave the house and go somewhere else. Because we know that on a daily basis, I personally send that information to parents. By 9.30, I should be able to inform the parents of whether the children are in school or not.
00:52:07Now, when you were giving those results, I almost forgot. They said that private schools especially, the quest to have 100%, what they do is that they encourage collusion. They register some of the adult students as external candidates. If you are not doing it, others are doing it. What do you say about that?
00:52:29Well, it may be true, but I must tell you that our students don't write independently. They write with other students under the same conditions. So there's just no way we have students with a series of A grades. Then I don't know how that collusion can be promoted in an environment where they are writing with students from other schools.
00:52:53Our secret is just that we have the best quality of teachers. We're trained, we organise refresher courses, we invite inspectors to drill our teachers, follow them up and make them abreast with modern teaching methodologies.
00:53:09I hope you pay them well too.
00:53:11Of course we pay them. If we don't pay them well, they will not be there and of course they will not be producing these results.
00:53:17We are talking about institutions. You also have an institution. Apart from being the President of Comparative Education for Society in Africa, you are also the President of the Heritage Higher Institute of Peace and Development Studies. In terms of institutions, what is the role, what is the responsibility of institutions in the following standards?
00:53:43Let me just say that I have two daughters with A-levels this year and one of them actually had A-levels from Denmark.
00:53:53Accept our congratulations on their behalf.
00:53:58Let me say that we are running the Heritage University Institute of Peace and Development Studies and we think that it is important. After a huge experience out of the country, we thought that it would be important for us to come and do education in another way.
00:54:12In the Heritage University Institute, we have created HOPs in order to promote the system of education. By HOPs, we mean that in all the departments, mechanical engineering, computer engineering, accountancy, we have students come together and actually create entrepreneurship tendencies.
00:54:36I must say that we are succeeding in this light because we just talked about fire disaster. We have a student who came out with a software that can determine the degree of heat in any environment and can reduce fire disaster. We are looking forward to exploiting such students.
00:54:55In the mechanical department, we have come out with a HOP where our students are coming out with small machines that can pick that along the road. How are we using this to promote the professionalization of education? We think that it is incumbent on us to come out with what he talked about, the reading culture.
00:55:17In those HOPs, we compel the students to be able to have practical. That is why we encourage research by giving out free laptops to every single student in that school, free of charge, in order to encourage them to work with students out of the country, online, in order to improve themselves and get the results.
00:55:37We talk about discipline in schools and institutions as a way of making sure that students maintain standards.
00:56:07The first person to imbibe discipline and implement it is the student. We make the students first and foremost to know that they are big enough, they should be independent, and nobody should be running after them. That is why we have hardly had a case of drug abuse because we monitor the students very closely.
00:56:25That is why you will not get students of heritage dress anyhow. We are in a university. We make sure that all sorts of discipline is being imbibed so as to ensure that the results are attained.
00:56:45With your permission, I believe the educational authorities are listening to us. We are talking about falling standards of education. One very important aspect that is being neglected is the use of religious studies. It is true that it is recognised and assessed in exams, but it is not considered when recruiting.
00:57:05Of course, you agree with me that when you train children without the fear of God, you are simply training intellectual devils. We are calling on the government to ensure that...
00:57:27I don't understand if laic means that it is a pagan state, but it simply has to do with the fact that there is a multiplicity of religions and there is no official state religion. We see state officials, when they are appointed, they take hold of office by swearing with the Bible or the Koran, so it should be considered.
00:57:47I think if we consider it and give the importance it deserves, it is going to contribute to moral rearmament and help to fight some of the ills we have in our society.
00:58:16We are glad to be here and we think that the parents, the teachers, the society as a whole, the government has the responsibility to make sure that the education of the children actually prevails and that the curriculum or the curricula should be adopted in such a way that there is a need-based assessment first. What is the curriculum? Does it match with the needs of the local realities?
00:58:40Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you very much, Professor Willie Brett Zengwa, who is the President of Comparative Education Society for Africa and President of Heritage Institute for Peace and Development Studies. Thank you, Mr. Sambum Humphrey, Principal St. Mark's English High School, Bandumu Yaounde.
00:59:04We missed out on Stephen Ojong. We don't know what happened. We also missed out on a principal of a government school whose permission was withdrawn at the last minute by his regional delegate. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you. We still had a discussion with these two very august panelists.
00:59:30This program will be broadcast on Monday on CRTV Premium at 2.30 p.m. and after the news at 9 p.m. after the news in the French language at 9 p.m. in CRTV News on Wednesday. Thank you once again for watching.
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