GCE Registration : Noun Stakeholders Facilitate Process For IDP Students

Out of the 63,500 families who have fled the war in Cameroon’s North West and South West Regions and taken refuge in the West Region, many are understandably without their official papers. Having abandoned them in the course of their flight, or lost them in homes that were set ablaze. While some never had these papers in the first place.

In this category are hundreds of students now enrolled in the Sultan Mbombo Njoya Government Bilingual High School, Foumban in Noun Division of the West Region. Over 100 of them could not register for the General Certificate of Education, GCE Advanced Level examination this academic year. Because they could not produce their GCE Ordinary Level transcripts which qualify them to sit the GCE Advanced Level.

But thanks to a civil status registration awareness programme aired earlier this year on Noun Community Radio, Foumban by Anne Marie Chintouo, the fate of the internally-displaced students regained some glimmer of hope. “Amongst those listening to my call-in programme was a staff of the Noun Divisional Delegation of Secondary Education,” Chintouo recalled. “After hearing of the plight of the Anglophone students, he promptly informed his boss, the Divisional Delegate for Secondary Education for Noun. Who in turn directed Hassan Ousseini, Principal of Sultan Mbombo Njoya Government Bilingual High School, Foumban, to compile a list of displaced students who had lost their GCE Ordinary Level transcripts in the war,” she narrated.

The Divisional Delegate, Mountapbeme Celestin, then wrote to the Registrar of the Cameroon General of Education Board, Buea. The Board did not waste time in responding. “The confirmation of GCE Ordinary Level results through the issue of fresh transcripts enabled more than 100 displaced Anglophone students of Sultan Mbombo Njoya Government Bilingual High School, Foumban to register for the 2019 GCE Advanced Level examination,” Anne Marie Chintouo told Cameroon Tribune with an air of fulfillment.

Mbiydzela Elvira, a Form Four student of Sultan Mbombo Njoya Government Bilingual High School, Foumban, fled Bamenda since the war began. Fortunately, she took along her birth certificate. Her only complaint is the alleged discrimination against Anglophone students by Francophones. Sakah Laurentine, a Form Four student in the same school, fled the war in Bui Division of the North West Region with the mother and two younger siblings. Because o...