129 the political and language maps of Northwest Province, section 3.2. This political structuring
along geographical lines makes it difficult to estimate the populations of the Bafut, Kom and Nso peoples, since the national census data available is by political entity, not by language
community. The political structure of Cameroon is a centralised one. The Constitution of 1972,
modified by 1996 reforms, provides for a strongly centralised government in which the President is empowered to name and dismiss most government officials. All local
government officials are in fact employees of the central government, whence they obtain their budgets.
126
The highest provincial authority - the provincial governor - is described as the guardian of the authority of the State within the province, and is accountable to the
President of the Republic.
127
The divisional authorities are also named by the President, though they operate under the authority of the provincial governor.
128
The administrative structure of the government of Cameroon may be seen in Appendix 15.
This generally centralised structure means that national-level decisions about language use in education such as the Constitution of 1996 and the Law on Education of
1998 are mandated for local implementation. However it is also the case that the authority structures of province, division and sub-division express their own perspectives on national
directives by means of the extent to which they facilitate or obstruct their implementation of those directives. Examples of this are seen in chapter six.
4.3. Education authorities: government and denominational
As the arm of the national government which controls local education, the divisional and local education authorities have a significant impact on use of the local language in
schools. They interpret and mediate national law and curriculum to schools in the local community. In the government school system, the national policies are locally implemented
by divisional delegates, inspectors, headmasters and classroom teachers. A similar structure is used in the mission schools
129
, with the primary difference being found at the top; each
126
Information from http:www.factrover.comgovernmentCameroon_government.html. Accessed 23 Feb 2004.
127
From the official website of the Cameroonian Prime Minister. http:www.spm.gov.cmcamerounorg_adminorg_administratif_f.htm. My translation. Accessed 23 Feb 2004.
128
Ibid.
129
The term mission schools, though widely used in Cameroon, is actually an anachronism as foreign missionary influence in these school systems is now slight. The principal mission schools in Northwest Province
130 denominational education system is run by an Education Secretary, approved by the Ministry
of National Education. School managers function as the mission school equivalent of inspectors, maintaining regional administrative authority over the denominations schools
while the divisional inspector has the responsibility of seeing that national pedagogical objectives are carried out OI: Eben 10 Feb 03; OI: Tumenta 17 Feb 03.
As has been described in chapter three of this study, mission schools have played a significant role in the history of education in the Northwest Province of Cameroon. Even
today they constitute a substantial proportion of the primary and secondary education facilities available, although the proliferation of government schools with lower tuition fees
in the last ten years has made the government option much more popular in the homelands. Amin 1999:122-123 traces the demand for public vs. private largely mission
130
schooling in Northwest Province as shown in Figure 4.1 below. Amins figures show that at least up
until 1994, private education remained the choice of roughly 40 of the population of the Northwest Province; this is twice the demand shown in Cameroon as a whole.
131
This high degree of trust in the mission school to provide the desired education for ones children is also
evident from the parent interview surveys, discussed in section 6.1.2. Thus the perspectives and priorities of mission education authorities continue to have an impact on language use
practices in the education system of Northwest Province.
Figure 4.1. Relative rates of enrolment for public and private education in Northwest Province and in Cameroon as a whole, by percentage
taken from Amin 1999
Area 1980 1985
1990 1994
Northwest Province: Public 48.7
51.7 57.4
58.5 Northwest Province: Private
51.3 48.3
42.5 41.5
Cameroon: Public 64.5
72.3 78.9
79.2 Cameroon: Private
35.4 27.6
21.1 20.8
are those run by the Cameroon Baptist Convention CBC, the Presbyterian Church in Cameroon PCC and the Catholic Church.
130
The private i.e. not government-run schools in the Northwest Province are usually mission schools, although in recent years a number of for-profit private schools have opened. These latter schools are usually
secondary or technical training schools.
131
However, the trend is likely to be for an increased proportion of government schools. Both Banboyee and Eben, Education Secretaries for the Catholic and Baptist denominations respectively, spoke to me of the
governments recent attempts to gain the upper hand in primary education by building more school buildings and offering reduced or free tuition.
131 National policy on language and education, whether formulated by government or
denomination, depends on the local education authorities for its interpretation and implementation. In Kom, the current support of government divisional inspectors and school
managers is cited by Godfrey Kain, the KLDC literacy coordinator, as one reason for the popularity of the PROPELCA programme:
Inspectors and school managers place teachers in Kom, and they are now more willing to keep PROPELCA teachers in the class they are trained for OI: Kain 20
Jan 03.
The implication here is that this has not always been the case. Indeed, one primary school headmaster contends that official approval of PROPELCA is still not universal in
Kom:
The delegates and inspectors still dont understand the programme. It needs legal action, to say what we have to do. The local application of the national law [the
so-called text of application
132
] is missing: it depends on the inspector or manager, who decides on PROPELCA or not OI: Lawyer 19 March 03.
So the sympathy - or lack thereof - of division-level authorities has significant impact on the effectiveness of the PROPELCA programme in these areas. This is the case for
mission education authorities as well as those of the government. Speaking of the late 1990s, when local mission education authorities withdrew their support from PROPELCA in Nso,
literacy supervisor Patrick Meliim describes the impact of the policy swings of first the denominations and then the government :
During the years of collapse . . . interested teachers were transferred, and those [schools] carrying the programme dropped it. It is possible to lobby the school
managers not to transfer PROPELCA teachers, but it depends on their inclination. . . . But at the end of 1999, the government stepped in - the programme is now
reawakening. The delegate of education sent a paper around to inspectors to give authority to headmasters [of government schools] to accept PROPELCA. OI:
Meliim 5 Jan 03.
Bafut has had the same experience, in which a particular divisional inspector of education is currently having great impact on the degree of acceptance of mother-tongue
education in local primary schools. John Ambe, a BALA literacy supervisor, describes the change:
132
The text of application is a document written by the national government to specify how a given law will be implemented. Until this text of application is disseminated, the law is not technically in force. See section 6.3.1.
132
The other inspectors of education of the government schools who used to be in Bafut, they didnt take a lot of interest in [mother-tongue education]. They were
not Bafut. The current inspector is a Bafut man, and has been in his post for about 3 years. Inspectors are not generally assigned to their home areas, but in this case
he was. So we had these difficulties, but there is a big change now. So I have a document like this [a list of postings of PROPELCA teachers to local schools],
endorsed by the inspector himself, for headmasters to implement; before, we could not have this OI: Ambe 3 Feb 03.
Thus, the impact of the education authorities, both government and denominational, on formal use and instruction of the written mother tongue is significant. These authorities
may not wield much influence on local use of the oral mother tongue; but when it comes to the written mother tongue and mother-tongue education, they are highly influential. In the
words of Nso PROPELCA teacher Doris Wirngo, when the authorities make a remark on it [PROPELCA], you find teachers going to the training OI: Wirngo 27 July 03.
4.4. The role of the homeland in language use and attitudes
