"BACC candidates in Far North need encouragement"

The Director of the Cameroon Baccalaureate Board, Zacharie Mbatsogo, has urged officials in examination sub-centres in Cameroon to encourage candidates.

“Despite the insecurities caused by the Boko Haram insurgencies, they were able to undergo a full academic year and are ready to face the exams,” he said, adding that insecurity should not make officials treat them differently.

Mbatsogo made the remark recently, during a press briefing organised at the Board’sCentre in Yaounde to announce the launch of the 2015Baccalaureate examination session.

Addressing reporters, Mbatsogo said the Board is not indifferent to the insecurities in the FarNorth Region. He said, as part of its safety measures to ensure that everything is ready for the smooth running of its 20thexaminationsession, the Board has ensured that candidates whose schools in Kolofata and Fotokol were closed down because of attacks from Boko Haram, are respectively attached to the sub-centres schools of Makary and Mora.

To him, the students in these Regions need more of encouragement than pity. “These students need to be encouraged. This will enable them not to go into the examination hall with a complex,” he said.

The Director also announced some improvements in this year’s Baccalaureate examination session. He said some innovations have been made and the Board has ameliorated the working conditions of staff in order to reduce cases of fraud identified during previous sessions. He cited, among other things,the automatic registration of regular student’s names, date and place of birth, and the review of their series.

Mbatsogo also stated that auxiliary staff has been designated in each centre with a specific task of tracking, and monitoring the activities of the secretariat.

This year Baccalaureate examinations witnessed an increase in registration with 348,959 candidates as against 334,790 in 2014. The exams, which started on June 5, is expected to end in July.