2019 GCE certificates remain unavailable, but Board offers ‘attestation of non-availability of certificate’

Authorities of the Cameroon GCE Board say 2019 certificates are yet to be printed but the Board can issue students an attestation of non-availability of a certificate, which will be attached to the result slip and will help students secure admissions into schools abroad.

The attestation of the non-availability of certificate is issued for free by the GCE Board to students and can be used in place of a certificate when certificates are unavailable.

Under normal circumstances, GCE certificates usually take at least a year or two before they are printed. This is unlike the result slips, which are usually printed at the same time results, are released, says an official of the certification office of the GCE Board who preferred anonymity.
“Wherever you go and a certificate is needed from you, you just come and we will issue you an attestation of non-availability of certificate for free. It indicates that certificates for that particular year have not been printed,” the official added.

Some students who wrote the General Certificate of Education, GCE, exams in 2019 have complained about the unavailability of their certificates one year later, saying they cannot get admitted into schools abroad if the Cameroon GCE Board fails to produce them soon.

Speaking to MMI, a 2019 candidate says his family could not secure admission for his brother into a school in the United Kingdom because the result slip was rejected.

“This is a terrible situation, bearing in mind that result slips aren’t accepted in the process of admissions overseas. I have my cousin who went to the CGCEB this morning to find out, he was told that the certificates are not yet printed. This cousin of mine needs the certificate so urgently to carry on his admissions process into a medical institute in the UK,” he said.

The decision on when to issue GCE certificates is taken at the level of the Secondary Education Ministry in collaboration with the registrar of the GCE Board.

The GCE Board has, since its creation in 1993, been the sole organizer of exams and issuer of certificates to secondary and high school students in the English subsystem of education in Cameroon.

In October 2018, the Board was reorganized by a presidential decree, which created a board to manage the affairs of the Anglo-Saxon institution, with representatives from several administrative institutions.

This meant the board was to be managed more from the national level and there were fears this could make it lose its Anglo-Saxon and credible nature.

By Tata Mbunwe

Mimi Mefo Info