The official marking session of the 2012 Cameroon General Certificate of Examinations (GCE) kicked off on Tuesday June 26 in Buea and Bamenda, for the South West and North West Regions respectively.

The examiners and Chief examiners converge in their various centres every morning from 7am to begin work. After a break from 12pm to 1pm, they delve into the students' scripts up to 5pm in the evening, for the marking exercise. Saturdays and Sundays are not left out for the herculean job, especially as the actors are determined to meet up with the marking deadline of 10 days.

In Buea for instance, throughout the past week, the early morning rains met with an unabated determination by the markers who massively turned out present for the exercise. Out of 6,000 examiners and Chief examiners, Buea is host to about 4,000. They are divided into smaller groups called centres in various school campuses in the Chief town of the Region. As such, Ordinary Level subjects are being marked in Baptist High School (B.H.S.) Great Soppo, Presbyterian Comprehensive Secondary School (P.C.S.S.) Buea Town and Government High School (GHS) Bokwaongo. Meanwhile, Advanced Level subjects are marked at Bilingual Grammar School (BGS) Molyko.

When CT visited some of the centres last Friday June 29, the markers were bent over their scripts. They were grouped in classrooms and halls, where the exercise was running smoothly. Pre-testing and sample marking sheets had been done to guide them. At PCSS, 635 teachers have been programmed for the marking process. They were in charge of three Ordinary Level subjects being Chemistry, History and Religious Studies. Another Centre, BGS Molyko has two centres for in charge of Advanced Level subjects. BGS I subjects include Accounting, Chemistry, Food Science and Nutrition, Geology, Geography and Philosophy; BSS II deals with Further Maths, Pure Maths and Mechanics, Pure Maths and Statistics, Information and Communication Technologies, Religious Studies and Computer Science.

It would be noted that a technical service was also put in place to facilitate the marking process. This service is in charge of marking Paper I subjects which are set under the Multiple Choice Question (MCQ) format. All Chiefs of centres were unanimous that the 2012 GCE marking session was running hitch-free.