Rebels to organise children’s exams after three-year break

Rebels who control the north of Cote d’Ivoire have announced plans to begin organising exams for children living in their territory, where education systems ground to a halt three years ago. “We have decided that we will organise exams because the national minister for education has refused to, in what we consider to be cultural genocide,” Mamadou Togba told IRIN on Monday. Hundreds of thousands of students have been unable to sit annual school examinations since the country was split in two by war following an attempted coup in September 2002. According to Togba, many of the budding scholars paid their examination fees, but were still unable to sit their tests. “The Education Minister has taken the fees of 72,000 candidates who wanted to sit exams in 2003-2004 and another 93,000 candidates in 2004-2005. The refusal by the Education Minister to then organise exams is a violation of the convention on children’s rights which has been ratified by Cote d’Ivoire,” said Togba. Speaking on national television last week, Education Minister Michel Amani N’Guessan reiterated pledges to make sure that children living in the northern rebel half of the country could sit exams at both primary and secondary level. Although the minister gave no date, the country representative for the UN children’s agency UNICEF, Yossouf Oomar, told IRIN that the government in fact was close to announcing a schedule for exams. Unless children take and pass end of year exams, they are unable to move up the school system or progress from primary to secondary education. If secondary school entry exams are not taken before a child is 15, they are considered too old and thrown out of the education system. Prized baccalaureate examinations that can earn the best students a place at university have also been affected. The New Forces rebels’ decision comes after the end of a special three-day conference in the northern rebel-held town of Korhogo that closed on Friday. “The meeting decided that because the Education Ministry had already launched the examination process, no one in the future will be able to question whether these diplomas are valid or not,” said Colonel Major Sinima Bamba, head of humanitarian affairs in the rebel zone. Government spokesman Etienne Tanoh from the Education Ministry, told IRIN that the rebels had made the decision without consultation with his ministry. “We do not have any comment to make. The rebels have decided to organise exams in their zone, we cannot contest that decision,” he said. Under the rebel proposals, secondary school pupils will have to pay exam registration fees of 2,600 CFA, around US $5. But the rebel statement gave no details as to who would set the exams, or which body would validate the results. UNICEF’s Oomar, who has been working with the Education Ministry to find a solution to the exam problem, urged patience. “It is the responsibility of the Education Ministry to organise exams,” said Oomar, who warned that a dual examination system could create confusion. “UNICEF would urge the people in the north, who have waited so long, to wait a couple of days more.” Education Minister Amani N’Guessan said on television last week that the government would assume responsibility for school exams in the north of the divided country. Those examinations could take place as early as mid-November, according to UNICEF, and an official announcement from N’Guessan’s ministry is expected in the coming days. During the 2002-2003 school year, 230,000 pupils remained in rebel territory after mutineers attempted unsuccessfully to oust the government of President Laurent Gbagbo. Thousands of government workers, including teachers, fled the rebel zone in the early days of the war and never returned leaving many schools empty or struggling to function with the help of volunteer teachers. At the end of the 2002-2003 school year some 75,000 children managed to sit exams in the rebel north, but with the warring sides struggling to agree on a formula for peace and reunification, the examination process has since ground to a halt.