The Secondary School Teachers Union of Zambia (SESTUZ) has blamed parents for rampant examination malpractices. Parents are actually in the fore-front organising and buying leaked examination papers for their children. According to SESTUZ the government needed to build more schools because the population of Zambia had increased drastically while the number of schools remained static.

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.

KABALE district has sacked 280 primary school teachers who were either on trial or untrained and recruited 240 to replace them. The 280 teachers had been appointed last year when the department had a shortage of teachers. The education sector is now carrying out a massive exercise to get rid of teachers with fake or forged papers.

Poor performance in the 2004 Primary leaving Examinations has been blamed on the many teachers who used fake academic documents and poor sanitation in numerous schools. Of the 5,655 pupils who sat for PLE last year, only 90 passed in grade one, while 3,892 failed.

The new Matura exam, which is designed to be more objective and to ensure that the familiarity of students and teachers is no longer a factor, is facing criticism. Papers are now encoded and a cheat will automatically be failed. However, concerning the subject of the oral presentation, the student can now choose it before the actual exam. This has created a market for ready-made presentation which have appeared on the Internet for prices ranging from $30 to $165.

The Mpumalanga education department has begun disciplinary hearings for 61 teachers accused of being involved in last year's matric exam cheating. Investigations revealed that candidates were assisted, possibly by teachers, in one or more subjects. Irregular practices took place at 10 of the province's Mpumalanga's 587 examination centres.

The firing of a teacher who helped expose the cheating in last year's matric exams shows that whistle-blowers' rights are badly protected. This despite the promise from the Education Minister to protect those who exposed the cheating. Seven months after the fraud in the Mpumalanga matric exams, the only person who has been penalised is one of the whistle-blowers.

Twenty-two teachers are involved in a multimillion-rand fraud. Provincial education department officials have taken advantage of an offer of amnesty in return for information on the ringleaders. All the teachers would face criminal charges as the amnesty was only for the departmental disciplinary process.

Eight parents and teachers who used hi-tech equipment to help children cheat in Chinese college entrance exams have been sent to prison. They were given sentences of six months to three years after being found guilty of using mobile phones, tiny earpieces or mini scanners in order to obtain state secrets.

Over 100,000 fake certificates of various Indian universities have been found in a Bihar town. The absence of industries and other business opportunities forces young men and women in Bihar to apply for jobs in government-run schools and also resort to fake certificates. Only two days ago, the government had rejected more than four million applications to check a fake degree racket and other irregularities during a teacher recruitment drive for government-run schools.