Students And Teachers Defy Separatists School Lockdown – Cameroon

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.