Search Page

To reduce the use of bribes, the parliament has approved a nationwide, standardized multiple choice test for high school seniors. This would substitute for written and oral admission exams that now leave room for subjective grading – and bribes. The testing requirement is expected to come into force in 2009.

The chief executive of the National Examinations Council (NECO) has authorised the council's officers to accept bribes if offered by desperate students or their parents. The measure is to save lives of NECO personnel subjected to frequent and deadly attacks by persons desperate to pass their Senior Secondary Certificate Examination by all means. In the last two years, NECO officials had been splashed with acid.

A pilot program 'Fighting against corruption through schools' will teach students and parents to identify and act against dishonesty in their schools and the rest of society. Most civil servants in Cameroon, including teachers, earn low salaries and rely on bribes to feed their families.

The minister of education underlines the sector's engagement in the fight against corruption at schools, thus calling on the citizen's cooperation. The campaign "Olympiad of Knowledge" aims to pay homage to the best students. The minister underlines that bribe and corruption only postpone or compromise the quality of student's future.

Low wages and lax standards have created a vicious cycle: teachers and school administrators demand bribes; parents feel they can't refuse.

Contractors hired to build schools in Mbale district have accused primary school management committees of demanding bribes before releasing funds under the school facilitation grant programme.

Ten weeks in charge of Belgrade's most unruly high school killed its Director's passion for education. Few of the staff members were willing to cooperate with her efforts to stop a system of bribery for good grades. When the police caught one math teacher accepting a marked 50-euros note from a student and the problem came out into the open, the teachers rebelled against her with a vote of no confidence in her authority.