Proprietors of some 25 Lay Private Schools in the Southwest Region have received a week-long mentorship on how to digitise management and record keeping in their schools, as well as a desktop computer each to ease the process.
This was at the end of a seminar on digitalisation organised in Buea by the National Association of Lay Private Schools in Cameroon, known by the acronym SENAT. It was themed, “Excellent schools: Solid Foundation for Holistic Development of the Child”.
The seminar ended on Saturday, April 26, during a ceremony presided over by Basson Barthelemy, National Secretary of SENAT.
Also present was the Assistant National Secretary, Dr Notang Evelyn; the Southwest Regional Secretary, Dr Ebah Moses Metuge; a representative of the Ministry of Basic Education and other stakeholders.
Mr Basson encouraged the proprietors to judiciously use the knowledge and equipment they had received from SENAT in order to distinguish lay private schools from their competitors.
“How can we talk about digitalisation when we still have our head teachers who cannot put on a computer? So now we want ICT to be taught in all our schools, even those in the villages. That’s why we have provided them with one computer and we can assure them that, by the grace of God, more of these gifts are on the way,” he said.
Dr Evelyn Nojang, the Assistant National Secretary, drew attention to the relevance of the seminar with school proprietors.
She said it was meant to usher lay private schools into the modern era of digitalisation. This will facilitate the implementation of the government’s requirement for all students in secondary schools in Cameroon to have digital matricule numbers that will keep track of their academic journey and performance.
“Many of them [pupils] have never seen a computer. And this means they are living in the dark. We have to take them into the modern,” Dr Nojang said.
She added: “So we organised this seminar under the title, ‘Excellent Schools’, as a base for the excellent upbringing of a child. And you can’t leave anyone behind. We are getting modern. That’s why digitalisation is a very important aspect of education now and we have to carry the proprietors forward.”
The Regional Secretary, Dr Ebah Moses Metuge, urged the proprietors to make good use of the computers they had received, take good care of them and multiply the number in order to attain SENAT’s mission of making them modern and quality schools.
The recent seminar is one of a series of seminars SENAT is organising with lay private school proprietors in the Southwest in an effort to usher schools into the digital era.
Participants came from schools across the six Divisions of the Southwest, including Lebialem, Fako, Meme, Ndian, Manyu and Kupe Manenguba. Dr Nojang said SENAT intends to continue the endeavour until all lay private schools in the Southwest are ushered into the digital era.
Abang Monica, Propriety of Cause of Our Joy Bilingual Nursery and Primary School Mundemba was among the 25 school proprietors who participated in the seminar. They learned to digitise their school records, including conducting admissions, setting exams registering marks and producing report cards digitally.
“When I go back, it has even triggered me to start looking for computers to create a computer lab, whereby children in the nursery and primary school can move into the lab. It will also facilitate the teachers too to deliver certain lessons using the computer,” Mrs Abang Monica said.
She plans to adopt a blended learning approach at her school, whereby some lessons will be delivered to pupils via the computer to visual understanding of concepts.
SENAT’s National Secretary said what the proprietors had received was just an introduction of what the association will do to boost ICT education at the primary school level.
He promised that, in the near future, they will provide these school proprietors with a software that will enable them to manage the administrative, financial and pedagogic records of their schools.
By Hope Nda
