Parents Teachers Associations in the Development of Public Secondary Schools in Mezam Division (Cameroon), 1979-2023

Parents Teachers Associations (PTA) are major actors in the governance and management of academic institutions in Cameroon schools and colleges yet their engagement is most often undermined in scholarship. This study that centrally sets out to fill a literature gap, explores the extent to which PTAs have responded to their mission of serving as private non-interest partners to complement government actions in the development of public secondary schools. Using a qualitative historical embedded design informed by primary and secondary sources, the study investigates the workings of the Association from the specific case of Mezam Division of the North West Region, Cameroon a hub of forty public secondary schools with significant and ever-growing student enrolment. The paper maintains that through a strategy of resource mobilization from philanthropic gestures to volunteerism and later to the introduction of official functioning texts specifying, among other aspects, the introduction of levies, PTAs have left visible imprints of infrastructural uplifts, human resource mobilization and the provision of extra-curricular and social utilities in public secondary schools. These achievements notwithstanding, the PTAs faced tethering challenges such as ignorance to the statutory functioning principles from the management, poor devotion by members to the Associations’ objectives due to distrust and conflicts of interest between the school administrators and the PTA management leading to corruption and misappropriation. In spite of the challenges, the PTA remains a strategic partner in the development of secondary schools in Mezam and Cameroon as a whole as it continues to bring community support to boast the inadequate government investments. It is perhaps for this consideration that the supervisory Ministry of Secondary Education has kept a strict lens to monitor and provide a productive environment for the operations of the PTAs to enable them attain their vision and mission