Government Colleges: Why steady so many vice principals?

Some schools have more than 20 vice principals, though the authorities complain that the number is still not enough for the number of students.

Government Colleges in Douala are filled with Vice Principals, who, apart from carrying out administrative duties and overseeing the work of students and teachers, also teach. In big schools like Government Bilingual High School Bonaberi, Government Bilingual High School, Deido, Lycée Joss and Lycée d’Akwa, the number of Vice Principals (VPs) is high, but school authorities say they are not enough, given the ever-increasing number of student population.

In Government Bilingual High School, Bonaberi for example, 22 Vice Principals take care of the 6,500 students. According to the Principal, Engal François, a Vice Principal takes care of at most 400 students. A Vice Principal in the French Department in GBHS Bonaberi, Tumasang Gisele, said apart from teaching for six hours every week, they ensure that teaching goes on effectively and that teachers evaluate students based on what they taught in class. After the scripts are marked, the VPs make sure that corrections are done in class for weak students to catch-up. After the marks are recorded, she went on; the VPs enter them into the computer for the production of report cards at the end of the term.

Away from class work, the Vice Principals follow up teachers to make sure they cover 50 per cent of work at the end of First Term and complete the syllabus at the end of the Second Term. This is because the Third Term is usually for revision and preparations for promotion and certificate examinations.

About a decade ago, Government Colleges, be them secondary, bilingual or high schools, had just two Vice Principals - one for the First Cycle and the other for Second Cycle; or one for the Anglophone Section and the other for the Francophone Section. A parent explained that it used to take more than a week to meet the Vice Principal for a problem concerning a child. But with the current situation of one Vice Principal to 400 students, discipline, academics and a lot more have improved.