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The Ministry of Education (MoE) announced that the supplementary fees for security guards at schools are entirely voluntary. However, schools preventing children from attending class because their parents have not made such payments will be punished by the Law. The MoE also reported corruptions scandals in the Southern province of Inhambane, such as the sale of fake certificates or the rigging of examination marks for the Teachers Training Centre admission charged 780 US dollars.

The Teachers Service Commission (TSC) has launched a new biometric enrolment and validation of teachers system intended to address staff shortages and prevent the use of fake degrees. Pre-loaded data from the TSC payroll system will be validated when the teachers provide physical documents such as an enrolment certificate, national identity card, letter of first and last appointment together with their academic and professional certificates. This pilot registration took off in 143 schools in seven counties.

400 cases of fraud had been recorded in the examination conducted by the Ministry of Education for the recruitment of primary school teachers in the public service. The unsuccessful candidates accused the Recruitment Commission of allegedly failing to meet the age and grade criteria for the required qualification, the Certificate of Teaching Skills for Nursery and Primary School Teachers. 21-year-old candidates who were supposed to have obtained the certificate at the age of 15 were selected, whereas the civil service only recruits people aged 32 at the most.

In 2019, the Ministry of Education and Sports ordered the online registration of all teachers in Kwania to streamline their services and help clear ghost workers. According to the Ministry of Education records from January, over 15,000 teachers turned up for the validation exercise with fake documents, whereas 52,900 teachers were registered under the Teacher Management Information System and received certificates.

The African Union report shows that at least 57 percent of people who make contact with schools in Malawi pay bribes. Informal payments threaten children’s rights and welfare. For example, informal charges by teachers for teaching, and for additional items such as school meals, books, uniforms or exams can drive poorer students in particular to miss school. In addition, the acquisition of fake or fraudulent qualifications affect the learning outcomes of children.

According to Transparency International, 66 per cent of the money Nigerian governments allocate to education is stolen by corrupt officials. Resource misallocation, corrupt procurement, exchange of sex for grades, examination malpractices, fake qualifications, teacher absenteeism, and corrupt recruitment practices are just some examples of the challenges the education systems is facing. This affects the quality of education, inclusion and learning outcomes with devastating consequences for national economic growth.

Two teachers have been arrested after practicing at Seme Secondary school for eight and two years’ respectively. They got their jobs by using fake qualifications. It is said that the Mpumalanga Department of Education suffered a combined loss of more than R2.4m. The department apparently became suspicious about their qualifications in 2017 and asked them to resubmit their qualifications. The two will return to the Volkrust Regional Court on February 6.

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.

A human resources assistant in the Education ministry is in the courts after she fraudulently recruited 31 unqualified teachers. The accused is charged with 'Criminal abuse of office'. According to prosecutors, between October last year and February this year she connived with eight accomplices who have already appeared in court and hatched a plan to misrepresent to their employer and converted contracts to ‘indefinite conditions of service’ for teachers who would otherwise not have filled the required conditions.