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Government officials are waging a twitter battle with parents who tweet questions from national tests being taken by primary pupils in England. The Department for Education wants any information on the content of Sats papers removed as pupils take the tests at various times over two weeks. Officials have been messaging parents since Monday asking them to remove tweets revealing question details. The DfE said it wanted to clamp down on cheating.

Lecturers in universities and colleges as well as teachers in public and private schools who are found guilty of abusing students risk having their degrees and diplomas cancelled by the Government to curb rampant abuse, especially of female learners. The Deputy Minister of Higher and Tertiary Education, Science and Technology Development said there was an urgent need to curb the surge in sexual abuse of learners in schools, colleges and universities. Punishments such as imprisonment or expulsion from work was not enough since perpetrators always ended up teaching elsewhere using their diplomas or degrees.

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.

The Kenyan Certificate of Primary Education examinations ended last week while the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education examinations begin Monday. They both mark the culmination of a year of reforms of the systems and processes for managing those exams. While there is still a number of hurdles to cross in order to stamp out corruption entirely, the positive measures that the CS of Education has introduced will be celebrated in public when the results are announced in February, 2017.

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”.

In the latest education scam from Bihar, it appears that students can purchase top-scoring intermediate certificates for around Rs 5 lakh without even having to write the exam. Moreover, many schools and colleges have been getting their affiliations by improper means. All these skeletons are tumbling out in the light of probes launched after a TV sting found this year’s top-scoring students struggling to answer basic questions about their subjects. Most memorably, one top student said that political science is about cooking. The rot in the state of education has certainly been a long time cooking.

The Education Cabinet Secretary brushed off critics of the new measures he announced on Wednesday and announced that he will set aside all his ministerial duties in November to go around the country and monitor how the national examinations will be conducted. The secretary, known for his impromptu visits to schools which have put many headteachers on the spot, on Friday said his November 4 to 30 diary had been cleared to ensure he visits schools countrywide. He said there were many other measures the ministry has in the pipeline to stem examination cheating, including the use of technology.

The new rules spelt out by the Education Cabinet Secretary to curb cheating in national examinations signal the government’s determination to restore credibility in the country’s education system. For the past few years, the country has been grappling with rising cases of examination cheating, which reached ridiculous levels last year to the point where the public lost faith in the sanctity of the exams as schools, candidates, parents, examiners, and education and security officers were all roped into the cheating loop. More bold action must be taken to restore the credibility of the exams.

Teachers have complained about "cheating watches" being sold online to give students an unfair advantage in exams. These digital watches include an "emergency button" to quickly switch from hidden text to a clock face. The watches hold data or written information which can be read in exams. Watches are advertised on Amazon with the claim that they are "specifically designed for cheating on exams". But a deputy head from Bath has warned about the scale of this "hidden market" and says it could tempt stressed students into cheating.