2024/2025 academic year: Parents, children, teachers heighten preparations for school resumption.

Tailors and seamstresses are also witnessing a boom in their business as parents are trooping to their shops to sue school uniforms for their school going children.

Talking to The Guardian Post, some children who are preparing for back-to-school said they cannot wait to resume school and meet their friends and favourite teachers whom they have stayed for three months without seeing.

A Form Two student, Kum Patience, said: “I am happy to resume school once again after the long holidays. It was boring just staying at home doing nothing, but now I know I am going to go to school and come back home only in the afternoon”.

Another student, Kum Randy, in primary three pupil, said he was happy to resume school as he missed his teachers and missed his favourite subjects. 

While others are happy to resume school, others are complaining. Marie Anne Njume, an Upper Sixth student, said she will be going back to her normal school routine of getting up early again which she finds so challenging.

“I don’t like getting up very early in the morning and preparing for school and the assignments to sometimes take a lot of my resting time at home. But being in the examination class, I know I need to be able to do better in my studies,” she said.

Parents express level of preparedness 

Meanwhile, also talking to The Guardian Post, some parents said they have been preparing since the close of the last school year.

A parent, who did not want to be named, said: “Right now am not feeling the pressure and the high prices of school needs because I bought most of the things my kids will need when they were cheap. So, right now I will just get their books and that’s all”.

Another parent, who also opted for anonymity, said: “I have started getting things for my kids this week. I know I am a little late and prices have gone up a little. But I believe if I buy the school needs now, I will get then cheaper than if I wait again”.

Some parents express joy over of the date for school resumption from September 2 to September 9, which, they said, gives them more them to prepare the school needs of their children.

Enter book venders, business persons

A businesswoman selling socks and underwear at the Acacia Market in Yaounde, on her part, said business has been booming since the start of this month. 

She added that as prices of goods have gone up, this gives her the opportunity to make more profit from her business.

Book venders, on the other hand, said they are witnessing increase in sales.

A book vendor at the Acacia Market in Yaounde, who did not want to be named, said: “Sales keep increasing every day and because I can’t serve all the increasing customers alone, I have brought everyone from my house to help in the shop”. 

This story was first published in The Guardian Post issue No:3199 of Wednesday August 14, 2024