Career Guidance & Job Opportunities

EDUCATIONAL POLICY IN CAMEROON

The Cameroon educational system may be structured as here below:

PART I: KINDERGARTEN

It is unclear if early childhood education is compulsory in Cameroon. However, parents who can afford to do so generally send their children to kindergarten at about the age of three.

In the Anglophone sector of the country the kindergarten is known as a "nursery school" and in the Francophone sector it is called "l'ecole maternelle". Children attend these schools for about two or three years, until the age of five or six, when they are deemed ready to start attending elementary or primary school (" l'ecole primaire", in French). The vast majority of these "nursery schools" in Cameroon are privately owned, but there are also a few run by the Government.

PART II: PRIMARY EDUCATION

The duration of primary education is usually seven years The approximate age for graduation from primary school is twelve. This is the only part of a child's education that is compulsory in Cameroon, and most pupils tend to be a little more than 12 years of age by the time they graduate. The number of primary schools across the country is almost evenly divided between

Government-owned ones and those run by various religious denominations (e.g. Catholic, Presbyterian, Baptist, etc in the Christian parts, and Koranic ones in the Islamic parts).

One significant difference is that there are no tuition fees at the Government schools..

In the Anglophone sector, primary education is split up into seven successive classes and at the end of that period the students must take and pass some general exams in order to graduate. These are the First School Leaving Certificate and the Common Entrance Examination. In addition, there are technical, vocational and professional exams that allow students access to specific career paths.

PART III: SECONDARY EDUCATION

After primary school, there are at least three main further channels students can pursue, depending primarily on their family's financial circumstances, but also on the results obtained at the general exams cited above. These are:

1) Secondary/ Grammar Schools. The principal operators in this sector are the Government, the religious denominations, and a growing number of private entrepreneurs. Here again, tuition at the Government secondary schools (GSS) is either free or costs considerably less than at the other types of school. Selection into the GSS is based on the result obtained at the Common Entrance Exam. In the English-speaking parts, secondary education at these grammar schools generally takes five years, from ages 12 to 17. Students specialize in the arts and sciences, and at the end of the program they must take the General Certificate of Education (G.C.E.) exam, at the Ordinary

("O") level. If they pass, they qualify for admission into a high school, involving two more years of study, at the end of which they take the G.C.E. exam at the Advanced ("A") level. Success at this last exam opens doors to universities and other institutions of higher learning. By this time the students are aged about 18 or 19 years.

2) Technical/ Vocational Schools. In this sector the Government and private business people appear to be the main operators. (It is not clear why the religious missions shy away from this area.As the name suggests, the primary purpose of these schools is to train students in the technical/ technological fields, or to prepare them for specific vocations. The duration of the vocational education is generally four years, after which students must take some professional exams. In the old days they took the City & Guilds exam from London, but that is now being replaced by the "Certificat d'aptitude professionnelle" (CAP) exam from Yaounde. Success at either of these exams gets the student into a technical high school or another specialized institution, with a decent chance of securing employment upon completion.Incidentally, these two categories described above are generally known in Cameroon as colleges.Many of the colleges are boarding schools, which mean students leave home at a tender age to go and live on campus.

3) Apprenticeships/ Institutes:. Students with poor results at the end of their primary education,or ones whose parents cannot afford to send them to college, end up learning a trade locally.For instance, they can sign up at the appropriate place to learn how to become a motor mechanic,a carpenter, a tailor, a bricklayer, etc. There are also some institutes where a person can learn how to become a secretary, a typist, a clerk, etc. The duration of the training varies from one field to another. Visit More >>

Government High School, Widikum Cameroon