The IIEP/UNESCO report "Corrupt schools, corrupt universities: What can be done" has identified private tuition as a major source of "unethical behavior" in India, observing that it has become a major industry, consuming a considerable amount of parents' money and pupils' time. Together with private tuitions, two other major problems that face the Indian education system are the manipulation of entrance test scores and teachers absenteeism.

Operaciones y Descuentos Diversos, S.A. (Oddisa), a company chosen to prepare and distribute school lunches is under investigation for misappropriation of funds and money laundering. The many transactions, including accounts in Barbados, Luxembourg, and Paris, plus reports from schools in the provinces that stores of school-lunch products were burgled and other warehouses burned down, made it impossible to recover records.

Two primary and secondary teacher have been suspended for selling textbooks that belonged to the school, the textbooks meant for free distribution by the District Institute of Educational Training (DIET), among students were seized from a scrap dealer's shop.

The National Council for Teacher Education has drafted a professional code for school teachers that aims to restore "dignity and integrity" to the vocation of teaching. Everyone would agree that the vocation needs more respect than it receives now, but enforcing ethics must come after and not before dealing with the many and deep-rooted ills that plague school education in the country.

Massive quantities of food grains and fuel, meant to be distributed through the public distribution system or to be given to the poor under welfare schemes like food-for-work and school meals for poor children, have been stolen over the years and sold on the open market.

The state government of Hyderabad has decided to introduce a code of conduct for teachers from the next academic year as per the directions of the National Council for Teacher's Education (NCTE). A draft version of the rules, to be followed by teachers in the state, has already been prepared by the NCTE.

Information related to students, teachers and schools will be a click away, from this academic year. The information will soon be available on a website hosted by the National Informatics Centre. The student database will help teachers and parents concentrate on learning levels. The online database will also be used to arrest the drop-out rate among students.

Starting this year, the Bihar government will transfer the benefits of education schemes such as scholarships and school uniforms, as well as social welfare schemes such as old age and widow pensions, directly to the beneficiaries to reduce red tape and the possibility of mid-level officials pocketing part of the benefits. For schools, the government order brings the challenge of opening up to 25 million bank accounts for students from 69,500 primary and middle schools and 4,500 secondary and higher secondary schools.

KOLHAPUR: Like the grading system in higher education through the National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC), the state government will soon introduce the State Assessment and Accreditation Council (SAAC) system for the assessment and accreditation of the primary and secondary schools across the state, a move welcomed by city-based education activists who say it will bring transparency to the education system and will force schools to improve their infrastructure and education quality

About 3,000 schoolteachers in Bihar, who allegedly used fake degree certificates to get jobs, have resigned till date apprehending legal action. Earlier, the state government admitted that it recruited more than 300,000 contract teachers without verifying their educational and professional degrees. The petitioner of the probe said he has collected documents as evidence through Right to Information queries to prove that thousands of teachers used forged degrees to get jobs.