The planned strike to force the government to implement several reforms relating to the working condition of the teaching corps is set to disrupt the school year and add more strain to a system that has been turning in poor results year after year.
It’s been co-called by the Teachers’ Association of Cameroon (TAC), the teachers’ grouping that fought tough battles with authorities over examination reforms in the 1992s causing, many months’ disruption of classes in Anglophone schools.
The strike will run until the government “respects its promises and our rights and until it complies to our just and legitimate claims,” said TAC and the National Autonomous Trade Union of Secondary and High School teachers (SNAES) in a joint statement released at the weekend.
The statement detailed their demands as follows:
•Immediate payment of the research and documentation allowance of 50,000FCAF for secondary school teachers and 35,000FCFA for primary school teachers and the extension of this facility to sports and physical education teachers and a sine qua non;
• The start of negotiations that would lead to the adoption of a collective agreement for private education;
• A meeting to put in place other aspects of the teachers’ statutes that are not yet being applied (e.g. the re-evaluation of the teachers’ incremental indices, decorations for excellence by the ministers of education) as well as modalities for substantial revalorisation of workers’ living and working conditions.
The unions are also asking teachers to “abstain from filling or distributing administrative and pedagogic documents” like “reports of department meetings, report booklets and various statically forms” throughout the first term.
It would be the first strike in many years with the potential to rock the entire school system. A teacher’s strike led by TAC around 1993, including boycotting the marking of the General Certificate of Education, led to many months’ disruption of schools, with the impact felt for up to three academic years.
“If the government thinks it can be adamant to our plight after the first two weeks, we would modify our plan for the second phase of the first term,” said Ninjoh Paul, the national president of TAC. A “definite” plan for the rest of the academic year would be released before the end of the first term, Ninjoh said.
TAC is making a comeback with the strike. After the 1993 strike that resulted in the creation of the GCE Board, TAC was barely existent. It’s since been overtaken by the Cameroon Teachers’ Trade Union (CATTU) as the chief defender of teachers’ interests in Anglophone Cameroon.
The association is banding with SNAES, which is stronger among Francophone schools to give the plan strike a national scope. Both unions meet in Dschang, West region, on 16 July.
CATTU did not appear to be taking part as seen from documents which we obtained.
Planned to begin in early September, the announced strike comes as school outputs are falling. After a slight improvement in the GCE between 2009 and 2010, this year’s general results declined again in both the Advanced and Ordinary levels, according to analysis by the GCE Board.
Francophone exams were hit by a sorry performance with about 65 percent of candidates failing even after authorities dropped the pass mark to 6 over 20. Failures are being blamed on multiple factors, including the poor performance of teachers.
“If this strike is left to go into force, these two teacher unions are conscious that the already decadent performance of teachers and pupils/students will be aggravated during the whole 2011/2012 academic year,” TAC and SNAES said in their joint statement.
Two unions have called on teachers of primary and secondary schools nationwide to boycott the first two weeks of the coming academic year and then stay away from classes twice every month for the entire first term. 
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