GCE Results Hullaballoo: Time For Monono To Go?

/By Macdonald Ayang Okumb/

     Truth be told; I am one of those who admire the meteoric rise of the Registrar of the Cameroon General Certificate of Education examination, GCE Board, Humphrey Ekema Monono, in his pedagogic career; from just a classroom teacher to the strongman at the helm of one of Cameroon’s Examination Boards.

Humphrey Ekema Monono: GCE Board Registrar

     He has done many appreciable things for the board. He is generous, intelligent, a workaholic and is no less a man endowed with a rare sense of humour. The many national and international awards that he has earned all add to his long list of accomplishments.

     But let the bitter truth be told; what has been happening in the last three years with regards how the GCE results are published is a serious call for concern; and to some, it probably smacks of the beginning of the end of Monono’s 9 year stewardship at the Board if appropriate measures are not taken to redress the situation next year.

     Up until 2012, there existed little or no hullaballoo about how the GCE results were released. This is because apart from the fact that students’ result slips and broadsheets were sent to the various centres where the exams were written, the results were, to the appreciation of many, also published in newspapers which were readily available and could be circulated to even the remotest parts of the country with ample immediacy. In 2005 for example when I wrote my GCE O level, I was in possession of a newspaper that published my results in enclaved Akwaya less than three after they were released.

     2013 however saw a different experience and a complete paradigm shift by the Board in what it said was part of efforts to move along with the changing technological times. Results were no longer given to the print media to publish; they were not read on radio either meanwhile a new short message service, SMS, method of obtention of results was introduced, to the chagrin of many.

     The novelty which still continues to prove a big headache today was even introduced without prior sensitisation by the Board -  a move many saw as a faux pas and one synonymous with putting a cart before the horse.  Many faulted the board for failing to do a forewarning before introducing it.

     And those critics were right because I remember vividly that before the Board introduced the multiple choice questions format of testing, for instance, it had long announced it and later undertook a nationwide sensitisation tour during which officials of the Board met with students, parents and other stakeholders to concert on how to go about the adventure.

     Amidst such alarming controversy in 2013 concerning how the results were published, the Registrar in a hurriedly convened press conference, and acting as an expert firefighter, gave justifications that the Board had to move with the times and that it was also committed to guaranteeing the privacy of results of candidates which was before then undermined by the publication of results in newspapers.
      What Kind of privacy in public exams? Who has ever taken legal action against the Board that their privacy was violated by publishing their results in newspapers? By the way, it is results of successful candidates that are published and not those of candidates who failed; so one cannot say anybody is exposed to social shame or ridicule. The Board cannot also talk of privacy of results by refusing to publish them in newspapers and yet they are given to radio stations to read them.
     The Registrar’s other argument of their quest to move with the changes in technology is sharply defeated by the very fact that they cannot also make use of their official website in the results publication process. What is the use of the website (www.camgceb.org) if results cannot be published, or even announced on it? Monono shouldn’t forget that the GCE Board created an official website under his reign and the intention was to catch up with the exigencies of the ever-changing technological world by enabling people find information about its activities on the internet.
     Other examination bodies elsewhere on the continent such as the national examination council of Kenya and the West African examination council, for example, publish results of exams they run on their official websites once they are released. They are also published in national newspapers so they can circulate to areas not accessible to internet and radio or television signals.
     So, the Board cannot pretend that it is not aware of the huge digital divide that exists in Cameroon.  Not only are those in the city centres finding it difficult to get their results by SMS, many other towns and villages are not connected to mobile telephone network and internet services. By the way, the SMSs take several days to arrive and the cost for sending them is too high. Imagine the tension that candidates and their parents find themselves in when results are not forth coming and when they can’t use any other available option. The shortcomings of reading these results on radio can also not be over-emphasised. People cannot stick their ears to a radio set for the whole day to listen to GCE results.
     The GCE is such a sacrosanct exam that must not be treated with levity. It aches me when results of this much cherished exams have since 2013 been made to be ignominiously peddled like groundnuts on streets simply because the Board has abandoned convenient traditional mediums of publishing them and has embarked on novelties that are today proving to be problematic. Candidates and parents must not strain to get results.
     Nobody is against the changes though, but the general supplication is for the Board to rather use these new methods to complement and not to replace what Cameroonians have been used to.
The Board must also not be in a hurry and be excited to release the results without first ensuring that the slips and broadsheets have reached all the centres. I was shocked when I watched a school head in Douala lamenting on TV two days after the results were released this year that the slips and broadsheets had not reached them.