The exercise will end on December 7, 2012 in the South West Region.

Since November 1, schools and candidates in the national territory have been involved in the registration procedure for the 2013 GCE examinations.

Talking to officials of the GCE Board in Buea on November 5, they confirmed that the e-registration procedure which they introduced last year is continuing. They see it as a better procedure because it saves time and effort. Lenya Horace and Ngangeh Richard, Chief of Service for the Computer Department and Computer Specialist respectively at the GCE Board, highlighted the advantages of the e- registration procedure which they said candidates have the opportunity to double check their information for correct spellings, etc before it is sent to the GCE Board.

They said all that is needed for the registration process is a computer, a camera and a flash disk where they store the bio-data of the candidates and their photographs and send to the GCE Board. The candidate immediately receives the time table for the GCE with his photograph attached. The procedure, they said, saves time because it used to be difficult checking the thousands of registration forms sent to the Board in the past.

Thirdly, they said in future the data would serve to place finger prints and photographs on the certificates. They approach, they continued, will eventually enable the Board communicate results directly to candidates through their e- mails.

In spite of the benefits, there are some challenges to the procedure which they said have been amended during this year’s registration. These challenges include, school officials lacking computer knowledge, difficulties in introducing change, information reaching the GCE Board in corrupted and/or broken CDs. This year, they said, the information has to be stored in a flash memory from the schools.