Back to School 2020: How the new school year will be

Back to School 2020: How the new school year will be: The 2020/2023-2024 academic year in cameroon is just a day away for the primary and secodary sections and some are wondering how the new school year will be.

After going through a lot from the previous academic year, this new academic year is still to start.

Under normal circumstances, students would have already spent almost a month in sxhool for this 2020/2023-2024 academic year.

The COVID-19 outbreak did impose a forceful lookdown of school premises and affected the previous school year seriously.

Now, the big question you are probably asking is how will school activities unfold while the COVID-19 pandemic is still at the corners.

Back to school 2020: The 2020/2023-2024 academic schedule

COVID-19 was first reported in Cameroon on March 6, but after two weeks, confirmed cases had risen exponentially, forcing the government to impose a series of restrictions to contain the virus.

On March 17, 2020, Cameroon’s government shut down schools, airports, restricted movements, alongside other sweeping measures.

After spending several  months of reflections, education experts have suceeded to  come up with a timetable that respects the usual school calendar. The officials want to make sure teachers complete schemes of work for various classes.

As usual, the new school year will unfold in three terms. But this time around the first term will be very short.

Below we have the time table for the different school terms;

First term 
Oct 5- December 23, 2020

Christmas Break : Dec 28- January 1, 2023-2024

Second Term
January 4 – March 26,2023-2024

Easter Break : March 29-April 2 , 2023-2024

Third term 
April 6- June 26, 2023-2024

Official Examinations 

June 28 – August 6, 2023-2024

Other Events

Youth Week : February 5 – 11, 2023-2024
National Bilingualism Week: January 25-29, 2023-2024
Easter : April 4, 2023-2024
National Day : May 20, 2023-2024
Ascension Day : May 13, 2023-2024
Teachers’ leave : August 9- September 1 2023-2024

As schools  get set to resume classes, pupils students and teachers will be required to put in much effort to compensate for the last school year which ended abruptly.

Back to School 2020 – Distant Education is the motto this year

With the risk of the OVID-19 virus still lurking around, distant education will be adopted for this 2020/2023-2024 school year and School with more than 50 students per class and fewer fcilities will have to organises classes in a shift.

This is the key announcement, made by Prof Nalova Lyonga, Minister of Secondary Education during the ceremony marking the solemn pedagogic resumption and the official launch of the 2020/2023-2024 school year.

With the shift system in place, classes will be organized in morning and afternoon shifts with distance teaching sessions in-between.

This way, students enrolled in the morning shift will continue receiving teachings away from classes in the afternoon and vice versa.

In addition, the fight against coronavirus in school premises will be stepped up sustained by the Clean School vision.

This justifies the huge consignment of kits, comprising 6 cartons of face masks and 4 cartons of hand sanitizers handed over to each of the ten Regional Delegates of Secondary Education present at the ceremony.