Education authorities in N'Zérékoré are organizing a meeting to follow up on suspicions of embezzlement linked to the purchase of desks for Parents' Associations. The National Agency for the Fight against Corruption and Good Governance has announced the creation of a toll-free number to report cases of corruption. School officials and parent-teacher associations were sensitized to the notion of corruption and inappropriate practices. The prefect urged them to avoid manipulating associations to collect money from parents, stressing that those involved would have to answer to the law.

Meet in Class is a start-up that wants to simplify tutoring: four students share the price for a tutoring course. According to its founder, in France, tutoring represents a market of 2.5 billion euros of recognized courses, but 80% of the courses are paid under the table. The prices of courses offered through a "classic" agency cost between 40 and 50 euros per hour, a price considered too expensive for parents

In South Africa, an incident at a school in Soweto revived the debate over false teacher qualifications. This week, a former primary school teacher stabbed a director who had suspended him. The teacher was dismissed after the school discovered, following a complaint from parents, that he had lied about his qualifications and had no diploma. According to the South African Council of Educators, dozens or even hundreds of teachers lie about their qualifications.

The state of Egypt’s public schools is an essential indicator of the ways in which the Egyptian revolution has not reached its citizens. In fact, private tutoring has now become Egypt’s de facto education system. A number of teachers have admitted, unofficially, that they teach the strict minimum in class so as to be able to recuperate these same students in private tutoring sessions. According to some estimates, Egyptian families spend over 1 billion dollars in private classes to compensate for the poor level of education: a cost which comes to almost a quarter of the family income.

The national education minister announced in Alger on Wednesday that a joint commission would be set up to follow up on the application of the code of ethics signed at the end of November 2015 by the ministry and union representatives from the sector. The implementation of this commission, which counts among its member representatives from the ministry, unions and parent teacher associates, aims to follow up on the effective application on the ground of the different clauses of the code. The commission will be tasked with finding the mechanisms which will “make this code effective, in particular at the local level”.

With each teacher taking an average of 6.6 sick days per year, the non-replacement of absent teachers is a source of tension with parents. In the public sector, substitute teachers cover 97% of long-term absences at the secondary level. This rate falls to 38% for shorter absences. However, when it comes to replacing teachers, be it for longer or shorter periods, the private education system is more efficient than the public sector.