Authorities in Cameroon said at least 70,000 schoolchildren and their teachers have returned to classrooms this year in the troubled western regions.

The schools had been abandoned due to threats from English-speaking rebels, who see them as an arm of the French-speaking-majority’s rule.

Fourteen-year-old Clementine Fua said this year, she braved threats from separatists and successfully went to school in her hometown Njinikom, in the English-speaking Northwest region. Fua said separatists deprived her of education for three years.

Cameroon’s ministries of basic and secondary education said Fua is one of 70,000 students who returned to more than 400 re-opened schools this year in the Northwest and Southwest regions.

government official in charge of basic education in the Northwest, Wilfred Wambeng Ndong, said the number of children who took their First School Leaving exams this year increased dramatically.

Ndong said in 2020, 12,786 candidates sat for the First School Leaving and Common Entrance while in 2021 had 27,128 candidates sitting for the exams which meant the number almost doubled.

Ngwang Roland Yuven who is in charge of secondary education in the Northwest region, said the number of kids taking secondary school exams also increased.

Yuven said the success recorded this year might motivate parents to send their children back to school, despite continued threats from separatist militants.

The separatists attacked or set fire to more than 200 schools between 2017 and 2019, and nearly all schools in the North and Southwest regions shut down, as teachers left their jobs due to insecurity.

An education secretary of schools owned by the Presbyterian Church in Cameroon, Nji Samuel Kale, said everyone involved — students, parents, teachers and security forces — has shown great commitment to making sure the schools stay open.

The Teachers Service Commission in Kenya will this week begin conducting interviews to fill over 9,000 vacancies to alleviate staff shortage that has impacted negatively on many schools.

The shortlisted candidates will be interviewed between July 22 and July 28 and the successful applicants are expected to report on September 1. The crisis in public schools could worsen when Form Ones report next month.

The commission has already sent the merit lists to TSC sub-county directors who will oversee the interviews that will be done in central venues.

Competition for the slots is expected to be intense as there are more than 350,000 registered teachers who are jobless.

For secondary schools, the prospective teachers applied for vacancies in their regions while primary school teachers will be posted to any part of the country and not necessarily in the county where they will be recruited.

The applicants will be interviewed by panels comprising chair of the board of management, the principal, a subject specialist and the TSC county director or a representative.

The selection panels will comprise the sub-county director, the TSC sub-county human resource officer and two zonal curriculum support officers.

After the interviews, TSC will allow applicants who might have complaints to present them between July 29 and August 6, which will be handled at the county level.

The Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) will soon introduce voter education as a component of tertiary institutions’ curricula as part of efforts to encourage youths to take part in elections.

ZEC is already engaging the institutions in that regard and the parties would sign memoranda of understanding once agreements are concluded.

This was said by ZEC chief elections officer, Utloile Silaigwana, last week when he appeared before the Thematic Committee on Peace and Security to brief them on the status of voter education.

The initiative is part of ZEC’s “Catch Them Young Thrust” and will see the electoral body training lecturers and provide human and material resources where required.

The catch them young initiative is also meant to dissuade youths from engaging in undesirable acts like political violence.

Silaigwana also told the Committee that ZEC now had stand-alone departments on voter education and research and evaluation to ensure that the body fulfils its constitutional mandate

He said ZEC had come up with a programme to target rural women and marginalised communities in the ongoing voter education exercise.

While the electoral body has been carrying out virtual and radio education exercises these are not accessed by some communities especially women.

ZEC’s activities were disrupted due to restrictions on numbers at gatherings which has negatively affected voter education.

Last year Government suspended the holding of by-elections to fill vacant seats due to the pandemic.

The suspension has now been lifted and parties have begun preparations for the holding of the by-elections.

At least 1.6 million candidates will participate in this year’s West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) scheduled to begin on August 16.

The Head of National Office of West African Examination Council (WAEC), Patrick Areghan, gave the figure in an interview with news men in Lagos.

Areghan said that the council was working to accommodate some schools still lagging behind in registration which he said was taking its toll on the council’s operations.

Areghan said ahead of the conduct of the 2021 WASSCE, the council was working with relevant stakeholders to ensure a hitch-free WASSCE for school candidates, in spite of some challenges.

Areghan noted that examination conduct required money and other resources, adding that the entire process of conducting the examination – from the printing of examination materials, distributing them and ensuring security, to the recruitment of Adhoc staff and printing certificates – is a huge financial burden.

Areghan gave the assurance that WAEC would continue to do all it could to stay afloat.

He noted that the West African School Certificate was internationally accepted and required protection of its integrity

The HNO said that WAEC members had been meeting to fine-tune strategies that would ensure hitch-free conduct of the examination and warned that the body would not hesitate to hand any suspect over to the police.