In the press

Disgruntled parents in Zhejiang have complained to provincial education authorities over a policy that gave 19 children of government officials and teachers special treatment in college entrance examinations. These Practices are often linked to abuse of power and corruption, showed the vulnerability of the education system.

The committee set up in March last year by the Education Minister to investigate racism and sexism in higher education has revealed that discrimination was pervasive despite all the good policies generated by the institutions. The committee believes that the racism persists in higher education mostly because of the weakness of the institutions' information dissemination: it recommended the creation of a transformation compact which will help to oversight the institutions to sensitize staff to the different needs of students from various cultural and economic backgrounds.

The Boarding Schools Association (BSA) chairman Melvyn Roffe has declared that thousands of vulnerable children are being denied the chance to go to a boarding school because of ignorance and prejudice in local councils. He has also stated that there are hundreds of children whose life would be transformed by having a place in one of those schools, but because of bureaucratic procedures they are condemned to an ever diminishing circle of failure.

The Sindh Education Minister says that there are 7,700 ghost schools in the province. There is, however, finally some good news regarding this issue: on April 5, 2009 the miscreants who had occupied the Shaheed Zulfikar Ali Bhutto School at Goth Qaim Kharrul of the Dadu district decided to move out. However, arithmetic tells us that if we continue at this rate, it will take us 7,700 more years to eliminate all of them! And that's only in our province - according to our estimations, there are around 25,000 ghost schools in the country.

Cheating is up more than 20 per cent at the country's biggest university. It have been identified 201 cases last year, compared to 166 in 2007, although the student roll remained steady at 38,550. Using cell phones, sneaking unauthorized notes and material, with unpermitted calculators, dictionaries and electronic devices and writing answers before exams started are some of the new and old methods for cheating.

The pamphlet announces the opening of courses in eight colleges and asks for 50 bolivianos to be deposited in a bank account. The ministry of education gave notice that the announcement was not official. The ministry has already given a cautionary notice to the general public via the print press on the falsehood of the information that circulated through educational establishments in La Paz.

Since last month Swatzi parents have taken the streets because the government had fail carrying out the constitutional promise of free primary school education adopted in 2005. As a result, families have indebt in order to pay the scholar fees. The government has declared that at the end of the year only the pupils attending grades one and two will be except from school fees, and that the implementation will be progressive covering one grade each year until 2015.

As a result of the increasing economic scandals, business universities and schools around the world are now interested in including ethics classes in their programs. They are concerned with idea that students are not equipped to deal with ethical dilemmas, therefore several activities that involve the analysis of the causes and consequences of the crises, visits to convicted of fraud and projects to change are taking place.

Last year 68 Emiratis were blacklisted from the US for buying qualifications from online "degree mills". Authorities at the time said that those caught using fake degrees could be punished with up to 24 years in prison. However, the problem persists. It is suspected that although the university is registered as a company in the US, the operations were in the Dubai, from where they send fake qualifications around the world

Three women are being investigated for asking 80,000 pesos from four people pledging they would get them jobs as primary teachers. The accused admitted that they had falsified postings notices for several years.