Nursery and primary school children began the 2014/15 academic year on September 8, 2014 nationwide. After the long vacation, pupils and students meet with old and new friends. In Yaounde, parents could be seen rushing to send their wards to school.
Usually, the reopening date is not a happy day for school children especially the beginners. In some schools that Cameroon Tribune reporters visited, some children found it difficult to separate with their parents. Mballa Anastasie, a parent, said she tried as much as possible to convince her child that she was around but to no avail.
“I tried to stay around the campus but the teachers asked me to go back home and only come back at midday to take the child,” she said. That was the situation many parents faced on the reopening date especially in nursery schools. At the Amity International School in Yaounde, the Principal of the School, Umit Soydan, said children cry because they do not want to leave their parents.
He said on September 8, parents brought their children to school to come and play with the others and have some form of distraction.
According to him, that made the children forget that they were going to be separated from their parents. “That is a new strategy we have adopted and it worked,” he said.
At the Francophone section of the government Nursery School “Group B” Bastos, the Director, Cecile Manzoua, said registration was yet effective. She said there will be much affluence by mid-September or end of the month. She said for Nursery II, 60 pupils were expected but only 20 had registered.
Equally for Nursery I, 60 were expected but only 20 were present. She regretted the fact that, parents concentrate on secondary and primary school children because they believe children go to nursery school to play.
