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Authorities at the national examination body Uneb accused teachers of orchestrating a grand scheme in schools, that pushed pupils to cheat on the 2020 primary leaving exams. The board withheld the results of 2,220 candidates pending completion of investigations into malpractices. Cheating occurs in a number of ways, including parents, in some of the top schools being asked to commit to paying a fee in order for their children to receive good results in the primary leaving exam.

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.

In a bid to reduce absenteeism among both teachers and students, Mengo Senior school introduced a biometric system designed to monitor the movements of students and staff in and out of the school.

Three teachers were placed in prison for conspiracy and examination malpractice. They disobeyed the Uganda Examinations Board’ code of conduct and revealed the content of the 2018 Primary Leaving Examinations paper and then sold them to different schools in Buyende and Kamuli districts.

When the Uganda National Examinations Board (Uneb) released the exam timetables on Monday, it also addressed a troubling question: how to stem the rampant examination malpractices. In a statement, Uneb urged all candidates to report directly to the board any invigilator, teacher or head teacher and other candidates involved in examination malpractice. The Uneb executive secretary stated that “The board reserves the right to declare publicly names of centres, candidates or anyone else who will have involved themselves in examination malpractice”.

After years of piling up paper files, the Education Service Commission (ESC) will soon phase out its manual operations and demand that applicants for a job in the sector resort to electronic applications. The move to electronic means will ease the commission's ability to detect forgeries in applications and employment records.

In a scam unearthed recently, for over 14 months, hundreds of public servants in Wakiso district in Uganda were receiving salaries many times higher than what they are entitled to under their grades. So far, 183 teachers have admitted to have benefitted from this payroll fraud amounting up to 2.3 billion Ugandan shillings.

The consequences of teacher absenteeism are dramatic for the quality of teaching, and Uganda has taken drastic measures to combat the problem. The report brings together a researcher from UNESCO's Education for All Global Monitoring Report and a doctor in Sociology and Education Policy from the ENS in Abidjan.