By Ndefru Melanie in Bamenda
Common Entrance Examinations started on Tuesday, May 17, 2022, at a time when the streets in Bamenda are ghosted for reasons yet unknown. Kids had to go through lonely streets in Bamenda in order to sit for their exams.
Some pupils of Government Practicing School Old Town Bamenda, were found stranded, for fear of the unknown looking tired and weary, asking for the location of the primary school at GMI.
Teachers who left to supervise the exams and parents who left their homes for other needs were not left out of dismay, wondering what caused the streets to be empty, with pupils of different schools trekking through several roads; Commercial Avenue, Food market, Fish Pond hill just to find themselves in classrooms for the exams.
Pulling through with lessons has not been easy for pupils and students schooling in the Northwest region. A great number of them have moved from the suburbs to crowded classrooms in the city of Bamenda and putting in efforts to study amidst sporadic gunshots.
These kids going to write the Common Entrance Exams exams have studied for over 6 years, just to pull through with their exams in a tensed atmosphere. Parents who live further from examination centres either sent the kids to live with relatives close by, rent hotels where they will stay with the kids or had to trek with the children to their examination centres.
It wouldn’t be surpising to see that teachers just like parents will stay in schools to see that their children are safe while taking the exams and also accompany them home once they are done.
Bamenda, once known as the epicenter of quality education in Cameroon has seen school going children suffer brutality, maiming and kidnaps in their quest to gain quality education.
Bamenda has been in crisis since 2016 championed by teachers and lawyers who called for reforms in the educational and legal systems. A crisis that was further hijacked by separatists fighters using education as a yard stick to call for independence of a country known as Ambazonia.
The Government Common Entrance Examination gives the pupils access to Government schools after obtaining their First School Living Certificates.