The rush for a rare place in the best institutions in the country, as revealed by the recent release of all the performance rates of the two sub-systems of secondary education, is very much on.

Parents are finding it increasingly difficult to secure a place in one of these rare schools with the aim of guaranteeing success for their siblings. The choice is easy to make because these schools are there, but too few to meet the demand of a growing parent population in search of quality education for their children.

Schools with good results are well known; but many others, using the advantages offered by new information technologies are selling their institutions like hot cake, attracting parents like bees will go for an attractive flower. All sorts of initiatives have been brought in to sustain advertisements, ranging from huge billboards to flyers which elegant lads and lasses readily give out in public places. The widespread use of video games and other graphic effects is so effective that parents and students fall victim to many of these attractive schools which are, in effect, rather whitened sepulchers of sorts, having very little to offer at the end of the school year when it is usually very difficult and late for parents to correct their error.

Last year over 500 clandestine schools were discovered by the public authorities in the primary education sector alone. That may only be the tip of the huge iceberg of numerous other such school operating clandestinely and which enjoy the complicity of parents because of the paucity of available public schools and the difficulty observed in securing places in rather bloated classrooms.

These schools probably offer accepted standards but their clandestine nature puts them out of the main educational system because many of the students and pupils produced by this clandestine system are unable to accede official State examinations. They are thus reduced to making do with fraudulent activities along the ladder of academic performance because along the line they do not consider themselves as part of the formal educational system but, rather, educational outcasts at the best.

As the new academic year begins, parents should show proof of vigilance, lest these attractive advertisements mislead them into taking tracks that do not lead to the required success so cherished by parents. It is for this reason that government is represented at all levels of the administrative hierarchy by delegations and inspectorates of education to monitor the functioning of the educational system. Parents should, therefore, refer to these State bodies to ascertain the legality and usefulness of any educational institution because, statutorily, every institution is supposed to have the approval stamp of the State to be able to claim to deliver knowledge to Cameroonian children.