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Education officials have been caught helping private examination students take their exams after receiving bribes of over one million Leones, equivalent to about £110 Sterling per student. The Anti-Corruption Commission has paraded them on the streets in Freetown. Nevertheless, human rights experts are questioning the legitimacy of today’s tactics of publicly shaming the accused before they are charged to court.

According to the 2013 Auditor General's report, the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology failed to follow procurement rules in the year under review, thus violating the National Public Procurement Authority Act 2004. The report states that procurement procedures were not followed by ministry officials in violation of annual procurement plan of the ministry which stipulates a National Competitive Bidding and International Competitive Bidding methods to procure food for government boarding schools; teaching and learning materials; and textbooks.

A survey conducted by Transparency International in Ghana, Madagascar, Morocco, Niger, Senegal, Sierra Leone, and Uganda covered 8.500 parents, head teachers, heads of Parent Teacher Associations and district education officers. The reports show a lack of budgetary information in school and call for strengthening school financial regulations, clarifying responsibilities, empowering school committees, and engaging with school communities and parents.

The Education Minister of Sierra Leone ordered a countrywide verification exercise. Many schools, and teachers, actually registered simply do not exist. According to him : "If you take into consideration the subsidies we pay for these non-existent schools, non-existent teachers and inflated roster of pupils, then it is easy to surmise that the government loses tens of thousands of dollars, every month." He accuses officials in his own department of collusion with their counterparts in the Finance Ministry.

Although the post-conflict period ended officially in 2006, the Ministry of Education is still not able to effectively monitor teaching and learning processes nationwide. The system records teachers who do not physically exist, teachers that do not teach (´ghost teachers`), and teachers receiving salaries from several schools. In mid-2006, the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) placed two experts in the Planning Directorate of the Education Ministry in Sierra Leone's capital, Freetown, to set up an Education Management Information System (EMIS). This article summarizes the results of their investigations.