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A senior lawyer and human right activist has called for proper monitoring and utilization of the Universal Basic Education (UBE) Fund. The UBE fund is an annual grant by the federal government to help states upgrade their primary education facilities in order to provide a good education for children across the nation. In his statement, the activist warned that the fund may be diverted by politicians desperately looking for money to buy votes during the forthcoming general election in the country. He said the World Bank gave Nigeria a grant $611 million (N219 billion) for the UBE scheme.

MPs have rejected assertions by the Walter Sisulu University‚ service provider Intellimali and NSFAS that there was foul play in the "erroneous" payment of R14-million into a student’s account. The lawmakers from across the political divide pointed their guns at the three entities‚ with some telling Intellimali that they were too quick to lay criminal charges against the student‚ while the role of their employees has not been investigated in the matter. MPs also called on the higher education department to consider a review of the system used by NSFAS and universities to pay living allowances to students‚ saying there was no need for "middlemen" to be involved in the distribution of billions of rand.

Universities across the country may now have to resort to cashless means like bank transfers, cheques and credit/debit cards while making use of periodic funds from University Grants Commission (UGC). The commission said the move was in order to bring in accountability, transparency and seamlessness in the process of transfer of grants. The commission said it has virtually made payments cashless and decreased the interface between stakeholders and employees of the organisation.

A leaked report has revealed “extreme” government concern after an academy trust was found to have paid its chief executive more than £82,000 for 15 weeks’ work. The investigation, which took place over June and July this year, also found that Wakefield City Academy were unable to produce the list of students receiving pupil premium payments (additional funding to raise the attainment of disadvantaged pupils in schools).

The Education ministry is investigating a number of schools for allegedly inflating enrolment figures in a bid to unduly benefit from free learning cash. The Cabinet Secretary warned that appropriate action would be taken against individuals involved in the scandal, saying such a practice is a criminal offence punishable by law. The Auditor-General’s report on the Ministry of Education’s financial statements for the 2013/2014 financial year says the government had lost millions of shillings of capitation funds in public schools through inflated enrolment figures.

The President has ordered an audit of how public primary and secondary schools have spent the billions in free learning cash released to them across three years. Free Primary Education funds were first rolled out in 2003, with each child getting Sh1,020 per year. In 2014, the Jubilee government increased FPE to Sh1,420 to cater for an estimated enrolment of about 10 million children in about 23,000 public primary schools. Annually this costs Sh14 billion.

Universities may attract penalty, including a freeze of grants, if its teachers are found to be guiding more than eight PhD students at any given point in time as part of a drive to plug lacunae in research. The University Grants Commission will ask all universities to have anti-plagiarism software to ensure that the thesis papers reflect genuine research. The step assumes significance against the backdrop of some agencies offering their services to research scholars to draft theses for them for a fee.

Accreditors keep hundreds of schools with low graduation rates or high loan defaults alive. Most colleges can’t keep their doors open without an accreditor’s seal of approval, which is needed to get students access to federal loans and grants. But accreditors hardly ever kick out the worst-performing colleges and lack uniform standards for assessing graduation rates and loan defaults.