Cameroon: Educlick, a platform to compensate for the closure of schools

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Schools are closed in Cameroon. To compensate for this, a platform was set up to carry out work at home. AFP

Text by: RFI Follow

Since March 18, primary, secondary and university establishments have been closed in Cameroon because of the coronavirus. The Educlick digital learning platform provides elementary and secondary school students with free lessons in the school curriculum as well as paid exercises.

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Launched in 2018, this meeting platform between teachers and learners aimed to enable disadvantaged people to have access to education. But since the appearance of the pandemic in the country which counts 223 confirmed cases this Wednesday, the registrations exploded.

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The new registrants are pupils from the primary and secondary classes. They learn math, history and many other subjects. In one week, the Educlick platform went from 2,000 to 3,000 users, according to Blandine-Angèle Messa, its promoter: “ All the courses are free. Teachers develop training modules. This is what they already teach at school, which they publish on the platform. We are in partnership with two educational inspectors, who revise these courses, approve their publication or else disapprove . "

Since the schools closed, the platform has designed a knowledge test of 10,000 questions, intended for primary school students. Pascaline Mani wrote her son there: " We send the exercises by SMS and after he has finished, we send them back to the corrections and we also receive this by SMS ".

Connection, a brake on education

If Emmanuel Mbassi Ondoa, secretary general of the Cameroonian Federation and education union (Fecase) appreciates, he nevertheless finds that the cost of the Internet connection is a brake: “ This will exclude a large number of students. There are some who are also in regions where the parents do not even have the Android phone to be able to connect . For the teacher, the government must photocopy the lessons and make them available to students at the level of regional delegations.

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  • Cameroon
  • Education
  • Coronavirus
  • Containment

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