Officials of the Central and Decentralized services of the Ministry of Secondary and Basic Education are meeting in Yaounde to map the way forward for the new school year. The highly placed civil servants taking part in the conclave which opened on the 26^th of August 2016 included Pedagogic Inspectors, Regional Delegates and heads of examination boards.

They will inter alia, examine problems of discipline, the management of funds and review the last end of course examinations. The meeting holding at the Government Technical High School in Nkolbisson, Yaounde is under the direct supervision of the Secondary Education Minister, Jean Ernest Bibehe Massena.

CRTV

The Ministry of Secondary Education has ordered the closure of 75 private institutions before the beginning of the 2016-2017 academic year. The establishments were pinned by the Ministry of Secondary Education, for violating the terms of engagement in running secondary schools in Cameroon and for operating in residential homes.

The CPDM government identified such private schools in several cities, including Douala and Yaounde.  Parents have been invited to consult the list of institutions authorized to operate by the government prior to the registration of their children.

The Minister of Secondary Education has also stated that it allows no more than 80 students per class room in secondary schools.

However, the action of the Biya regime has been consistently inconsistent in the educational sector.  In 2014, 85 secondary schools were closed for the same reasons and after some under-the-table arrangements were allowed to go operational again.

By Sama Ernest

The Minister of Trade, Luc Magloire Mbarga Atangana has announced that all textbooks and workbooks for the 2016/2017 academic year are available with prices the same as last year. Minister Luc Magloire Mbarga Atangana assured parents of this during a press conference in Yaounde on the 10th August 2016.

Before the press conference, the Trade Minister had already signed a release on the 9^th of August 2016, spelling out the maximum prices for all school textbooks. Booksellers, distributors and owners of bookshops took part in the press conference in Yaounde.

CRTV

Jean Ernest Ngalle Bibehe, Cameroon’s Minister of Secondary Education (MINESEC), has summoned 369 teachers to Yaounde. Cameroon Concord News gathered that the 369 have been called by the MINESEC boss to justify the authenticity of their deeds of engagement with the Cameroon government.

The MINESEC move is aim at giving marginalized institutions genuine teachers.  New teachers assigned in the hinterland, often desert their duty stations and make use of various subterfuges, ending up in major cities and specifically in Douala, Yaoundé, Bafoussam, or other regional capitals that offer the minimum of modernity.

In the new policy, Minister Jean Ernest Ngalle Bibehe wants to change things. He intends to have sufficient quantity and quality in all public secondary schools including a dedicated staff. After the clean-up campaign, those teachers found guilty of having used false deeds of engagement will be ruthlessly crushed.

By Rita Akana (Cameroon Concord News Group)

More than 30 fake universities have been closed in the United Kingdom over the past year amid growing concerns about students being sold invalid degrees. According to a study published on Tuesday, a watchdog organization that monitors fake university degrees in the UK, known as Hedd (Higher Education Degree Datacheck), identified a total of 62 bogus institutions in 2015, with 32 of them being shut down by law enforcement and trading standards agencies, the Guardian reported.

Of the 32 fake institutions closed, 25 were based overseas, said Jayne Rowley, the director of Hedd. “All the ones that were shut down were completely bogus,” she said,describing the universities as “completely fake sites that talk of campuses of students when there’s literally nothing there at all.”

Since 2011, 220 bogus UK universities have been identified and 80 percent of them are no longer active, Rowley noted. Degree fraud has turned into a serious problem in the UK over the past years with recent evidence showing an increase in the number of universities offering fake degree certificates.

“With the onset of the internet and distance learning, degree fraud is a borderless crime and we must collaborate with agencies around the world to deal with it,” Rowley said. “An awful lot of fraud goes undetected, but we also need to get people thinking more about prevention,” she concluded.

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