Over 80% Cameroonian pupils are illiterate – UN report

Though the government of Cameroon has established new programmes to raise the quality of education of most children in primary schools UN reports say most of them can neither read nor write.

By Yemti Harry Ndienla

The reports note that Nursery and primary school pupils may be good at reciting but most of them cannot read, write or solve any arithmetical problems outside of the school setting.
Reports by the world body’s educational, cultural and scientific organ, UNESCO, and children’s emergency fund, UNICEF, published some years back, say more than 80 percent of Cameroonian pupils are illiterate.
The secretary general of the Ministry of Basic Education, Olinga Meka Rene, recently highlighted these UN findings during the opening of a four-day national training seminar jointly organised by La Francophonie and the Ministry of Basic Education.
Olinga noted that out of the school milieu, the overwhelming majority of pupils are incapable of using their intellect and are virtually daft when faced with practical situations, even though they may have a full mastery of the school programme.
This situation has been blamed on a dysfunctional academic system which has as corollary, low quality education.
But the secretary general pointed out that government has been trying to fight the problem by putting in place some priority programmes such as making primary education universal, improving the quality of education and ameliorating management and governance.
The seminar is expected to arm participants with the tools necessary to ensure that pupils acquire competence, are equipped to handle both French and English textbooks, performance is improve, autonomy is granted and school handicaps are overcome.
A Francophonie consultant, Philip Jonnaerttold, for his part, told workshop participants that textbooks are vital in developing pupils’ intellects and cannot be replaced even by the computer and ICTs.
He advised the government to adopt a system that ensures that the books chosen help pupils to know their immediate societies, while being coherent with international norms.
The seminar, he said, will enable Cameroon to elaborate, analyse and evaluate her educational system and to evaluate and diffuse development techniques so that accepted choices of textbooks and learning tools could be made