On Tuesday, the Culture and Education Minister said that the government was aiming to achieve higher standards of integrity with the implementation of the national exams (UN) starting in 2016. To that end, the Culture and Education Ministry has produced a barometer, namely the UN Integrity Index (IIUN), which measured the percentage of student answer sheets that showed no sign of cheating.

Against the backdrop of the recent closure of Nodos International School, Ojo, by the Lagos State government over alleged involvement in examination malpractices during a national Examinations Council (NECO) Senior Secondary Certificate Examinations, the Principal of the school has been relieved of his job. Okafor also stated that all the teaching staff that were also found complicit in the examinations malpractices that led to the closure of the school have also been asked to resign their appointments.

The Ministry of Education, Arts and Culture is investigating 82 learners suspected of cheating during their external exams in October and November this year. He declined to name the schools or regions where the learners are from but said they are from three different schools. One of the chief markers said that when the exam scripts were being marked it was observed that some students had the same answers.

One of the biggest Chinese illegal immigrant networks ever discovered in France was centred on a private business school based in the XVth arrondissement. This network made it possible to channel between 500 and 1000 Chinese immigrants into France annually, mostly young men between the ages of 20 and 25. Once in France, fake certificates attesting to their student status, report cards and diplomas allowed them to establish themselves permanently, without ever having to set foot in a classroom.

Allegations of corruption and immorality within the Congolese university community have been aired in a new book by a former education minister and current professor of languages at the University of Kinshasa. He proposed lowering student numbers to a controllable level to guarantee efficiency during examinations and academic deliberations.

With more universities and offices requiring English qualifications from graduates, students are turning to hiring other people to sit their English exams. The police in HCM City's Thu Duc District are investigating a case in which 34 students at the HCM City University of Agriculture and Forestry hired impersonators for their English exams. Last year, 10 impersonators were uncovered. Meanwhile, universities which require students take TOEFL, TOEIC or IELTS tests as English graduation exams have received a number of fake certificates.

The Minister of Primary and Secondary Education last week slammed the parents for paying Form One entrance examination fees saying they did that at their own peril as the Government has set an enrolment date for all the schools in the country. He said the entrance exams were banned long back by his ministry and have remained illegal and should not be left to continue. Enrolment of Form One students for next year started yesterday with parents expected to use their children's Grade Seven results.

At the end of November, for the first time, 500 of INSA Toulouse most recent graduates received a secure card which attested to the authenticity of their engineering degree at their graduation ceremony. The aim of the operation is to fight against cheating and forgery. The cards given to the students are protected against forgery by a nanoparticle marker which is invisible to the naked eye.

In India, university fraud is a national sport, practiced at all levels. Beginning with the former prime minister up to the former Delhi justice minister who allegedly fakes his qualification in … law. The increase in fake qualifications is undoubtedly linked to the lack of universities in the country, with some of the harshest selection processes in the world. Leaving the country to study overseas is so expensive that counterfeit diplomas from international universities abound.

Pretoria – A task team has been set up to investigate how a Life Sciences matric exam paper was leaked in Limpopo, the Basic Education Minister announced on Tuesday. The task team will be charged with establishing the source of the security breach as well as the spread of the access to the question paper. Among the possible outcomes of the scale of the leak is that learners at the affected school could be asked to rewrite the exam.