Academics · Nursery to Class 6

Every child reads.
Every child
passes.

Nine subjects in English and French, from a child's first words at age two to a 100% record in the public leaving examinations.

The curriculum

Everything a Cameroonian primary child should be taught.

Nine subjects, taught by subject rather than folded into a general lesson. The list below is the actual teaching timetable, not an aspiration.

English Language

Reading, comprehension, grammar and composition. The spine of the English stream, taught every day from Class 1.

French

A full teaching subject from pre-nursery onward, not a weekly visit. Spoken before it is written, as a language should be.

Mathematics

Number, operations, measurement, geometry and problem-solving — built so that Class 6 arithmetic rests on Class 1 counting.

Science

Observation before theory. Living things, matter, energy and the human body, with hands-on activity sessions.

Social Studies

Cameroon's geography, civics and how a community works — plus the child's place in it.

History

How the country and the continent came to be as they are, taught as a story with causes, not a list of dates.

Arts & Craft

Drawing, colour, making and display. The subject in which a quiet child often turns out to be the confident one.

Computer Studies

Taught in the school's own computer laboratory, with keyboard and typing work from the early years — a standing line in the fee structure, not an after-school extra.

Physical Education

Movement, games and a real inter-class football league on a full field. Timetabled, because a child who has run is a child who can sit still.

The literacy programme

Reading and writing from age three. Every child.

No matter what level your child is at, and no matter where they are coming from, our literacy programme brings them to reading and writing — in both languages — starting at three years old.

It works because it is deliberately unglamorous. Letters and sounds are taught explicitly rather than absorbed by hope. Children read aloud, to an adult, often — which is the single practice that separates schools where everyone reads from schools where most do. Writing starts as soon as the hand can hold a pencil, and does not wait for perfect spelling.

And the whole thing is watched. Because every class writes home each week, a child who is falling behind in reading shows up in that week's report — to their teacher and to you — while the gap is still small enough to close. A child who cannot yet read is treated here as a problem the school has not solved, not a problem the child has.

The spacious classrooms matter more here than anywhere else on the campus: small-group reading needs somewhere for the groups to sit.

How the bilingual method works

Children do not learn a language by studying it.

They learn it by needing it. So at Goddy Tabi both languages carry real teaching from the earliest classes — instructions, stories, songs, questions and answers — rather than one being the school's language and the other a subject on Wednesdays.

In the nursery years this is almost entirely oral: a child hears, repeats, and eventually thinks in both. From Class 1 the written work follows, and by upper primary a pupil is reading and composing in each language independently.

The point is not to produce two half-languages. It is that a child leaving Class 6 can choose either subsystem at secondary level and be at no disadvantage in it — and can hold a conversation anywhere in this country, or most of this continent.

Stage one · ages 2–5

The nursery years.

Pre-Nursery, Nursery 1 and Nursery 2. Days are play-led and deliberately language-soaked — rhymes, stories, naming, counting aloud, and a great deal of talking, in both languages.

Underneath the play there is a plan. By the end of Nursery 2 a child recognises letters and numbers, holds a pencil correctly, follows an instruction in either language, and can sit and attend to a task for long enough to learn from it. Those last two matter more than most parents expect.

Tuition in the nursery years is payable across five instalments rather than three — a deliberate easing for families starting out.

Nine subjects. Two languages. Eight years.

One continuous path from a child's first words to the public leaving examination, with nothing important left to chance in between.

Stage two · Classes 1 to 5

Primary: where the ground is covered.

Classes 1 to 3 turn decoding into fluency. Reading stops being an exercise and becomes the way other subjects are learned; writing becomes the child's own voice; mathematics moves from counting to reasoning.

Classes 4 and 5 are the consolidation years, and the ones schools most often waste. Full subject teaching, regular written work, and enough revision built into the ordinary week that Class 6 is not a shock.

Computer studies runs alongside throughout — keyboard and typing work is a standing part of the school's fee structure precisely so that it never becomes the thing that gets cut.

Stage three · Class 6

The examination year, taken seriously.

Class 6 ends in public examinations that decide which secondary school a child walks into. Goddy Tabi has consistently maintained a 100% pass rate in the First School Leaving Certificate and Common Entrance — and that is not something we leave to the ordinary timetable.

Class 6 pupils follow a dedicated examination preparation programme of remedial and revision classes, carried as its own line in the school's fee structure (15,000 FCFA, payable in three instalments) so that it is properly resourced rather than squeezed into the margins of the day.

Public examination registration is handled by the school on the family's behalf (19,500 FCFA), so no place is lost to a missed deadline or a form filled in wrongly.

See the full fee schedule

Assessment & reporting

You will not be surprised at the end of term.

Assessment here is continuous and, unusually, continuously reported.

Daily — attendance on the system

Roll call is taken each morning in the school's own system. A parent can see that their child arrived, the same day, rather than learning of a pattern of absence weeks later.

Weekly — a written report from the class teacher

Every class publishes a report to its parents each week: academic progress, behaviour, and anything the family can usefully do at home. Written by the teacher who taught the week, not summarised by an office.

Termly — the formal record

Subject-by-subject marks and the teacher's judgement, issued in the school's standard report and kept on file for the child's whole time here.

Whenever it matters — a conversation

Teachers and parents can message each other directly through Goddy Tabi Connect. A concern does not have to wait for an open day.

See a lesson before you decide.

We would rather you judged the teaching than the prospectus. Visits happen on ordinary school days, in ordinary classes.

Start an application Arrange a visit

Every child reads.Every childpasses.