On September 28, 2020, the 3,000 teachers recruited in May 2020 by the Ministry of Basic Education started signing their contracts with the Ministry of the Civil Service and Administrative Reform after a refresher course on teaching practices.

After a long period of working as temporary teachers, they are becoming public servants who will be assigned to schools that have less than three teachers for a minimum of 100 students thanks to the Support Program for Education Reform in Cameroon (Parec).

Parec, which is financially supported by the World Bank, aims to promote the recruitment of 12,000 teachers over four years. This will gradually put an end to the phenomenon called "maîtres des parents" which involves parents recruiting teachers to make up for the glaring shortage of teachers in basic education.

This phenomenon emerged because the recruitment of basic education teachers into the civil service was suspended. According to the principal of a public school, suspending the recruitment of basic education teachers is not justified because the government has continued recruiting secondary school teachers. “Education is a chain in which no link can be neglected,” the principal said.

D.M.