In the media

Albania’s Ministry of Education introduced a new Code of Ethics for Teachers, emphasizing professionalism, integrity, and cooperation. Drafted collectively with teachers, parents, and administrators, it sets standards for student safety, inclusion, transparency, and digital conduct.

South Africa’s Academy of Science has released a revised 2025 Code of Best Practice in Scholarly Journal Publishing, addressing AI misuse, peer-review ethics, open access, data transparency, and diversity. The code strengthens editorial independence, accountability, and integrity, aiming to curb predatory publishing, plagiarism, and unethical authorship. Stakeholders describe it as a blueprint for credibility and a safeguard for research trust.

The Arab League adopted its first AI Ethics Charter to guide the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) in education and research across member states. It emphasizes data privacy, sustainability, and technological sovereignty, promotes open-source tools and ethical research, and calls for regional collaboration. The charter also recommends monitoring systems and national policies to support responsible and inclusive AI development in the Arab world.

Since January 1st, 2025, a new law requires Californian school board members to undergo two hours of ethics training at least once every two years. This mandate also applies to school districts, county boards of education, and governing bodies of charter schools. The training covers topics such as legal issues, conflicts of interest, respect, and professional discourse.

In Kampala, Uganda, police arrested a director of studies and three teachers for allegedly sharing fake Primary Leaving Examination (PLE) papers via a WhatsApp group. The suspects falsely claimed to access the papers from the Uganda National Examinations Board (UNEB) and added other teachers to the group chat. UNEB warned of severe penalties for exam malpractice, PLE exams involving 798,771 candidates. They all face a fine of shs40 million and 10 years of imprisonment.

The Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education (MoPSE) has established strategic command centers across the nation to address various issues plaguing schools. These include actions like dismissing students over unpaid fees, offering paid extra lessons, discriminatory enrollment practices, corporal punishment, imposing unapproved fees, and other misconduct. The MoPSE's communications and advocacy director urged stakeholders to utilize designated contacts to report any malpractices. The goal is to ensure that every school-going child receives a quality, fair, and comprehensive primary, and secondary education.

The University of Oxford in the United Kingdom has announced a new policy for staff that bans any close personal relationship with students that “transgresses the boundaries of professional conduct”. This comes as regulator the Office for Students works on its regulations for staff-student relationships, launching a consultation on regulating harassment and sexual misconduct in higher education.

According to the head of the Observatory for Higher Education and Scientific Research, there has been an increase in exam cheating by students using mobile phones, lesson notes, or documents prepared for cheating, along with writing on the tables or even on the walls of the exam halls. Some observers instead of writing reports about cheating in exams are rather facilitating it. This can be attributed to a lack of resources and motivation that affects quality teaching along with a culture in which cheating has become normalized.

Following a growing number of misconduct allegations involving ministers and public servants, Queensland Department of Education Director-General announced zero tolerance to fraud and corruption and encouraged a culture of commitment to working with integrity. Employees and state school teachers and staff can now report alleged corruption through a new anonymous online portal.

A Statistics Canada study shows that one-third of women and nearly a quarter of men who teach and conduct research in Canadian university and college campuses face harassment. Data collected in late 2019 from 27,000 respondents about their experiences over the past year revealed five types of harassment: verbal abuse, humiliating behaviour, threats such as blackmail, threats to career or reputation, physical threats, physical violence, and unwanted sexual attention or sexual harassment.