CATTU intensifies preparations ahead of Educational Forum

By Sally Ncha Amoh in Yaoundé

The Cameroon Teachers’ Trade Union (CATTU) has intensified preparations ahead of the much- awaited Educational Forum scheduled for later this year. In the build-up to the forum, a lobby document which contains concrete proposals to positively boost Cameroon’s educational scene by 2035 and beyond was unveiled at the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung Foundation- FES in Yaounde last Thursday..

The document, pressmen were told, was born out of the ashes of a three-day workshop that held from March 12-14, 2013 at the FES. Jointly organized by CATTU and FES, the workshop which was aimed at fine-tuning proposals to be tabled at the Educational Forum, equally assembled sister trade unions like the Union of Parent –Teacher Association (UPTA), SNEPMA, PEATTU and SNUIPEN. The come together held under the theme: “Educational Options: Cameroon beyond 2035”.

According to CATTU interim secretary general, Atanga Bunai Christopher, the lobby document scans the four main areas of the academic curriculum, bilingualism, financing and evaluation. The CATTU interim secretary general clearly spelt out that the document proposes that more attention be paid to vocational training and technology; a realistic bilingualism policy for pupils and students; and a curriculum geared towards professionalism and production.

Concretely, the document lobbies amongst others for a 50/50 share between Practicals and Theory in Cameroon schools; government subsidy in the procurement of ICT tools for schools; the creation of at least one reference technical school in each division; obligatory partnership between foreign and indigenous authors and publishers in the field; a single certificate examination at the end of primary education which will serve as basis for admission into post-primary institutions; the creation of an examination board for that examination; set criteria for the appointment of officials at various levels in the created examination boards; the Implementation of bilingualism starting from nursery and primary schools; the creation of language laboratories in all administrative units to facilitate the bilingual programme; a new curriculum that bypasses the Anglophone and Francophone sub-systems; the presence and effectiveness of a school-based evaluation mechanism; and lots more.

Reiterating that these proposals cut across primary, secondary, high and tertiary schools, Atanga Bunai insisted that there could be no real emergence without technology, reason why CATTU is laying emphasis on it. According to him, an emerging educational system, such as the lobby advocated, is a prerequisite to achieving Cameroon’s Vision 2035 for an emerging nation.

Visiting memory lane, it was revealed that the workshop was a follow-up to fine-tune proposals earlier drafted in November 2012 in Bamenda, in prelude to the awaited Educational Forum. The idea of the forum in itself was born in Buea, in July 2011 during a workshop involving stakeholders in the educational sector, to map out the future of Cameroons educational scene. At this workshop, CATTU saw the need for education in Cameroon to start building producers and not consumers; job creators and not job seekers. The just ended workshop was therefore third-in-line, to fully prepare CATTU for the Educational Forum.