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Tanzania’s flagship University of Dar es Salaam is under investigation by the parliamentary Public Accounts Committee for the mismanagement of university funds. An audit report for the 2014-15 and 2015-16 fiscal years presented to the parliamentary committee earlier this month shows that approximately US$0.5 million was lost on unretired imprest from workers and US$0.2 million on salaries to ghost workers at the university. The committee chairperson suggested that poor financial management at the university was behind the losses.

The Education Minister, said everything must be done to check false claims and remove the ghost and fake teachers from the system. She made the call in an address read for her at the 23rd annual meeting of the Conference of Directors of Education (CODE) in Kumasi. The event brought together in excess of 230 divisional, regional, metropolitan, municipal and district directors from across the nation to review their activities and re-strategize to improve performance.

Public institutions have until next Friday to submit reports on investigations they have conducted on ghost workers, according to the Minister of State in the President's Office (Public Service Management and Good Governance). She noted that in the coming few days she would hand over the final report on ghost workers to the President, comprising reports filed by all public institutions ordered to conduct the audit. She said that as of yesterday, her office had received reports from 264 out of 409 institutions, of which 63 indicated that they did not have ghost workers.

Cheating by students who use essay mills is “virtually undetectable”, according to a study that found that many ghost-written papers would receive good marks if they were submitted. An associate lecturer in history at the University of New South Wales, conducted an experiment in which she ordered essays from 13 ghostwriting websites and then had them graded by leading academics who believed that they were looking at genuine student submissions. The results were “alarming”, with the quality of purchased essays being “higher than expected”; The use of essay mills might therefore be “much, much higher” than previously thought.

The Eastern Cape Education Department has concluded its investigation into 'ghost pupils', but it still faces the 'ghost teachers' scandal. The wife of a former African National Congress (ANC) Chief Whip faces 16 counts of fraud and 10 counts of money laundering after allegedly pocketing more than R1 million by processing several fake applications for Grade R teaching posts.

Three more cases of unlawful appointments in the Rawalpindi education department have been unearthed. According to sources in the education department, three fake women teachers have been hired for a high school for boys. The Anti-Corruption Establishment (ACE) is already investigating the appointment of 50 fake teachers in the education department in Kallar Syedan. The Executive District Officer has launched an inquiry into the bogus appointments, an official in the education department on condition of anonymity said.

The Sindh education department has decided to recover the funds disbursed in salaries to ghost teachers using its biometric attendance system. Sindh education secretary boasted that Sindh is the only province in the country to have biometric attendance in the education department.

A senior US official has called for independent verification of Afghan government figures on the use of US education aid following claims by Afghan ministers that the previous government had provided data on US-funded school and higher education projects that were flawed, tempered and exaggerated, and had interfered with university entrance exams. These allegations suggest the existence of ghost schools and teachers that are being paid for with US aid money.

Macquarie University has revoked the degrees of two students and prevented a further 10 from graduating after an independent investigation revealed the students used an online ghost-writing service to complete their assignments. The Northern Sydney University is the latest institution to finalise its internal investigations into the MyMaster cheating racket, in which up to 1,000 students from 16 universities hired the online company MyMaster to write their assignments and sit for online tests.

The Medical Council of India has asked state counsels to investigate the problem of “ghost” teachers in medical colleges following the discovery of more than 400 fake teachers in four colleges in three states. These “ghost teachers” are registered as faculty members drawing a hefty salary, but have never taken a single class. Most of them run private clinics, and only attend the college when there is an impending medical inspection.