Sunjo George: Regional Delegate of Secondary Education for the North West Region.

Sunjo George hails from Nso, precisely from Nkar in the Jakiri Sub Division in Bui Division in the North West Region of Cameroon.

Sunjo George: Regional Delegate of Secondary Education for the Northwest Region

 He was born some sixty years ago and attended primary school in his village at the Saint Mary’s Catholic School from 1960 to 1967. Thereafter he went to Saint Augustine’s College from 1967 to 1972. His academic pursuits took him to CCAST Bambili from 1972 to 1974. Still in a bid to go further, he attended the first cycle of the Higher Teacher Training College in Bambili(ENS Bambili) from 1974 to 1976. Upon completion in 1976, he joined the public service and taught respectively in CES Ndikinimiki, College Bilingue D’application, Yaounde. After obtaining a BA (Hons) in English from the University of Yaounde in 1979 he then proceeded to the second Cycle of the Higher Teacher Training College ENS Yaounde.

After graduating from ENS Yaounde, he did active classroom teaching between 1982 and 1988 in GHS Kumbo. In 1988 however there was a little professional twist in that he became the Chief of Cabinet to the President of the National Assembly the Fonka Shang Lawrence of Blessed Memory may his soul rest in perfect peace. He worked with him for four years. When they left in 1992 Sunjo George then began another phase of his career as a school Administrator. He then became Principal of GHS Elak Oku from 1992 to 1994. From 1994 to 1997 he served as Principal he served as principal of G.H.S. Nkambe. From 1997 to about 2003 he served as the Principal of GBHS Government Bilingual High School Kumbo but at the time it was also GHS Kumbo like in Nkambe.

In 2003, he was appointed the Divisional Delegate of Secondary Education for Bui and he served there for a period of six months which was up to 2009. On the 10^th of October 2009 he was appointed the Regional Delegate of Secondary Education for the North West Region. His has been a long journey which no doubt gave him a lot of experience in matters concerning Education. Moving from National Education, to Secondary Education and teaching forms quite an enriching experience which enabled him because of other experiences he gathered to be able to cope in the tasks to which he was assigned. To have a better feel of this educationist from the North West Region of Cameroon, Cameroon People’s Francis Ekongang Nzante Lenjo caught up with him in his Bamenda Office to eke out this interview. Read on…

Sir, what can you make of the Cameroon Educational System? True it is evolving but how far do you think it has gone down the road and what are those suggestions that you would chip in to enhance this evolution?

Yes as you rightly said, the educational system in Cameroon is evolving but perhaps it will be necessary for us to remind ourselves that we have two sub-systems of education and that all along the line there have been attempts to harmonize these two systems with one borrowing what is positive from the other and vice versa. It is however an ongoing process but I think that we are making a head way. Concerning Bilingualism, something that was started in Molyko or Man’o War Bay in Limbe in those days, what has been obtaining in the past was that it was two sub-systems that were actually running side by side in the name Bilingual Institutions. Now we are gradually going away from that to have Anglophones that can do disciplines in the French Language and vice versa. This experiment is one of the things that is resulting from this progress. It has no doubt its short comings but I believe that with time those problems will be solved because one of the things that hinders a proper implementation of our educational policies is insufficient staff, infrastructure and all of that particularly for our Technical Schools which need huge investments. There has been this craving for creation of schools which I totally buy because the numbers of schools that have been created have enabled some Cameroonians to be able to go to school. My humble suggestion would be that sometimes we should put a break and be able to equip these schools sufficiently and also be able to train sufficient number of teachers to cope with the high enrolment in the schools that we have in the country.    

The Unions have been fighting a war on the implementation of the 1998 Law on Education and I think that they are gradually making a head way. When this educational forum that was foreseen in 1998 would have met and sorted out the number of irregularities within our educational system, we would be moving towards a good harmonized system of education. Nothing is perfect on this God given earth. Perfection is elsewhere not here but I think we are continuously looking for ways and means to perfect our own educational system. 

You are at the head of the educational family in a region that is considered to be among the most performing in the country. About fifty percent of those who pass at the GCE come from this region. What has been the approach that produces these results?

Good. You know that one of the missions assigned to us is the supervision, follow up evaluation and the reporting to hierarchy of matters arising in the implementation of educational programmes. Now what we do at the level of the Northwest Region is to ensure proper follow up of the teaching learning processes in our various institutions. And one of the things that we have always done is the organisation of what we call the Mock GCE which incidentally started this morning and we discovered over the years that it is an adequate tool for us to use and sufficiently prepare our students for the GCE.I think it is because some other Regions saw the value in that kind of thing that all the Regions are now organizing the Mock Exams. It is the Northwest Region through the teachers’ resource unit that is organizing the Mock for all the regions of Cameroon. We do not end at just organizing because if that were to be the case then perhaps it will not serve a useful purpose so what we do is that we have a post Mock Evaluation. The teachers look at the areas where the children did not perform well and organise at the level of the Region and carry out a catch up at every Divisional Head Quarters. Resource persons come from the Inspectorate and participate in schools. During this evaluation, they get to discourse why the students performed the way they did. The teachers as such go back to their schools well armed to perfect the lapses. Furthermore, our PTAs in the Northwest are very vibrant and they put a lot of emphases on pedagogy and their contributions towards ensuring success in pedagogy have been enormous. Apart from the motivation that we give the teachers, the evaluations and follow ups, these are some of the things that we do to get the results that we always have.

Could you chip in a word with regards to Technical Education? The Anglophones do not seem to have taken this seriously. 

We know that Technical Education in the Anglophone Sub System was curiously considered as an area that was meant for students that were not considered to be intelligent but time has proved us wrong in that Technical Education is now what can put bread on the table. Students who do Technical Education can be self employed and can create jobs for other people to be employed. This is not to down play Secondary General but I think that to be realistic is to be able to get the kind of education that can get you immediately employed or immediately create a job. I would therefore in this light be calling on parents to give proper orientation to their children. Let their children do Technical Education. I would equally be calling on Government like I said a while ago to ensure that proper Technical Education is given to Children. GTC Ombe in those days was our pride. We don’t know why it went down the way it went but I think the spirit of Ombe is being revived now in other Anglophone Schools. That spirit of doing Technical Education is gradually coming back. I feel very encouraged now when I see children opting to go and do Technical Education.

Do you have a final message?

Well it has been an opportunity for me to talk to you and I think that we as stakeholders in education be they parents or students or you the journalist should engage in a continuous sensitization of our population to be able to see the need for education. We’ve been talking about the proliferation of schools in Cameroon but you will be surprised that there are still children who loiter around and do not go to school. The parents have no excuse. All the stakeholders should give the children an opportunity to go to school.

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