7:30am, Monday 7 September, nationwide: that is the official start time of Cameroon's school year. But two teachers' movements did not wait for the first bell to make themselves heard — public universities are already at a standstill, and the grassroots union collective is threatening a 'dead day.'
In higher education, the national executive board of the National Union of Higher Education Teachers (SYNES) declared an unlimited strike in the eleven state universities starting 3 September, claiming 80% of academic staff are following the call. This is not an isolated flare-up: public universities have been running at reduced capacity since 5 January 2026, and academic activities had already been suspended until 25 June.
The dispute comes down to two lines on a balance sheet. On one side, the special research-modernisation allowance, unpaid since the fourth quarter of 2025 and for 2026 quarters already due. On the other, what SYNES calls the 'academic debt': unpaid overtime for master's and doctoral juries, part-time teaching, expert fees and researcher-teacher bonuses. The union blames Higher Education Minister Jacques Fame Ndongo for a silence it equates with abandoning social dialogue.
In primary and secondary schools, the front is broader but less advanced on the calendar. The Collective of Cameroonian Teachers' Unions (COREC), a coalition of about fifteen organisations that counts the 'On a Trop Supporté' (OTS) movement — the same one that disrupted official exams in 2022 and 2023 — among its founding members, launched a national petition on 13 July and has renewed its 'dead school' operation for the start of term.
Its demands, meanwhile, are long-standing: the special teacher status, agreed in principle but never implemented, must take effect 'immediately.' The National Education Forum, promised in 2019 and again in 2025, must finally be held. Add to that a broader collective bargaining agreement and a dedicated text for the private sector.
Facing both fronts, the government is projecting calm. The Ministry of Secondary Education has instructed its officials to start classes on 7 September without unauthorised interruption, and the executive keeps repeating its wish to 'discuss' with the unions — without any firm negotiation date or payment schedule made public so far.
For families, the calculation remains concrete: they have bought school supplies — about 75,000 FCFA per child — and enrolled their children for a year that, in higher education, has not really begun, and that, in primary school, risks opening onto half-empty classrooms. What the two strikes share is not ideological: it is a bill the state signed and has not paid.
