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The Mpumalanga education department has begun disciplinary hearings for 61 teachers accused of being involved in last year's matric exam cheating. Investigations revealed that candidates were assisted, possibly by teachers, in one or more subjects. Irregular practices took place at 10 of the province's Mpumalanga's 587 examination centres.

South Africa's Finance Minister has advocated an aid transparency initiative focused on monitoring aid flow and how the aid is managed. He underlined the importance that the huge volumes of aid that flows into Africa are adequately monitored and tracked. The minister welcomed the support of Sweden to help return monies stashed in European banks.

Twenty-two teachers are involved in a multimillion-rand fraud. Provincial education department officials have taken advantage of an offer of amnesty in return for information on the ringleaders. All the teachers would face criminal charges as the amnesty was only for the departmental disciplinary process.

An official in the Ministry of Higher Education, who was apprehended on suspicion of theft from a government safe, is still in police custody, while investigations involving about N$98,300, which disappeared from a government safe, could reveal other suspects.

People in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda have been found buying fake degrees of all sorts from diploma mills and other bogus universities. Those universities have no physical existence and operate only through websites. Most diploma mills are operating from Britain or United States where academic standards are presumed to be very high. Recently, the Federal Bureau of Investigations compiled a list of over 10,000 persons who obtained fake degrees from diploma mills in USA. A significant number of them are from South Africa, Kenya and Nigeria. Currently, there are about 80 notorious diploma mills that operate from the United States and the UK.

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.

Sexual harassment is rarely discussed in South African universities, but an investigation into a sex scandal that has rocked the University of the Witwatersrand has brought the subject under the spotlight. Wits University is investigating some academics after its student Newspaper accused an unnamed lecturer in the political studies department of sexual misconduct.

The Department of Basic Education has finalised the terms of reference for the task team that will investigate allegations of selling of posts within the sector. The names of the task team members will be announced once the proposed list has been gazetted. Basic Education Minister established the task team after recent media reports alleging that some posts in the education sector were sold for cash.

A forensic probe into corrupt practices at the government’s embattled multibillion-rand student funding vehicle is set to be launched, said Higher Education and Training Minister. The scheme gets a significant portion of the department’s budget. Students who did not meet the scheme’s funding thresholds were granted loans, putting countless deserving others at a disadvantage.

The Deputy President says a proposal to deal with the problem of fake qualifications is being prepared and will soon be presented to Cabinet for approval. He said the Minister of Higher Education and Training has already requested that the South African Qualifications Authority establish a national register to list names of individuals who have misrepresented their qualifications or who have invalid qualifications.