TRUTH THAT MUST BE TOLD

Who’s afraid to arrest owners of illegal schools?
 

It’s the end of another hectic academic year. With it comes a flood of pamphlets, billboards, handbills, flyers and advertisements selling admissions into institutions that range from nurseries to “universities”, some issuing terminal degrees from non-existent campuses. Ask to see their authorisation and there will be none as if we live in a lawless no-man’s land where proprietors revel in untouchability.

Occasionally, the various ministries of education release a list of “illegal schools.” But they continue to operate with audacity regardless of the facilities and the ministerial injunctions. The unwritten rule is that such proscriptions only oil the wheels of bribery and corruption.

Those responsible, call them delegates, inspectors or what title they hold, entrusted with the task to ensure that the prohibited structures do not exist go round and collect bribes and the illegality goes on. Each time the officials run out of “petrol”, they visit the banned schools to collect their share of the exorbitant school fees.

Who to blame? First, the ministries concerned and secondly the parents who enroll their kids into such unauthorised schools. Parents who care about the quality of education their children get ought to demand to see the authorisation from suspicious institutions before registering their kids.

I have seen one “nursery and primary school” that functions in a man’s living parlour built in a risky slump. The husband is the teacher with his wife the principal, sorry, the head teacher. Don’t ask about their qualifications. There are hundreds of such schools just as there are “universities” offering degrees but their locations are only in brief cases. That reminds me of one “professor” who a few years back visited Cameroon awarding honorary doctorate degrees from a non-existing British “university” to some Cameroonians.

The “degree mills” have started operating in Cameroon even with the effrontery to advertise their services. Some go as far as claiming to be “extensions” of foreign universities. Nobody challenges them. They dupe the innocent public and qualifications obtained from Cameroon become suspect; downgraded and taken with a pinch of salt.

Being bilingual, Cameroonians would have had a competitive advantage for international jobs among Africans, Ghanaians lead the way. Cameroonians are not because the quality of education raises questions especially with the ease at which Cameroonian certificates are forged. Isn’t it a shame that students graduate from universities in Cameroon and are issued just attestations, which are easier to forge, than degree certificates? Aren’t the educational authorities ashamed that certificates from relatively impoverished Chad are better graded in France than those from Cameroon?

If we want to ameliorate the quality of education, shouldn’t the authorities start by ensuring that all schools meet the standards both in infrastructure and quality of staff? Who’s afraid of taking proprietors of illegal schools to court to serve as a deterrent to business people who’s only crave for profits sullies the standard of the educational system?

Postscript: It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it-Aristotle.