The integrity of public examinations in developing countries

In this chapter, Greaney and Kellaghan examine the extent to which procedures to standardise the conditions under which examinations are prepared, administered and scored are observed or violated. They show that the range of individuals involved in attempts to infringe examination procedures goes well beyond a student's family or school personnel, and that in some countries, examination corruption has become a business and individuals and groups engage in malpractice for monetary gain. Much of their consideration of malpractice, both its execution and attempts to detect and prevent it, focuses on administrative and technical matters, which are the day-to-day issues that preoccupy examination authorities in developing countries. In the first part, following a description of their sources of evidence, they describe forms of malpractice that have been identified in examinations. They then review the limited evidence that is available on the frequency of malpractice. Following this, they consider reasons for malpractice and outline some of the procedures that have been developed to detect it. Finally, they consider ways to control or prevent its occurrence.