Search Page

A secondary school head teacher has finally allowed internal auditors from the regional education office to audit schoolbooks where money is reported to have gone missing. Apart from being barred from the school, the auditors were also threatened with legal action by the head teacher.

The president of New Zealand's largest postsecondary institution defended it last month against politicians who have accused it of widespread corruption. It is also suggested that the university is home to nepotism and fraudulent accounting.

A new approach in development aid could be fuelling corruption. Western countries are testing the "budget support model", whereby funds are given directly to the government in order to reduce poverty. A report claims that up to June 2002, government expenditure was not supported by the correct documentation.

There is a certain frustration at the Mpraeso Secondary School over the administration's attempts to improve accountability and transparency. The implementation of anti-corruption measures through the automation of accounting and administrative procedures as a means of checking and curbing corruption has been bogged by official apathy. The computerization programme, 'School Management Programme', that could have cost the school about ¢5 million a few months ago will now cost the school almost double that amount.

Sierra Leonean civil society activists are working to improve accountability. The National Accountability Group (NAG) – the local chapter of Transparency International – used a Public Expenditure Tracking Survey (PETS) to find out what had happened to school fee subsidies and learning materials designated for a sample of 28 schools in a rural district. NAG's survey came after an earlier Ministry of Finance PETS revealed startling figures about education corruption. In 2002 researchers found that 45.1 percent of the funds for school fees subsidies were unaccounted for and that nearly 28 percent of teaching and learning materials had disappeared.

Private and public universities in South Korea have engaged in creative accounting practices resulting in excessive hikes in tuition fees, the state audit agency said. Wrapping up an investigation into 35 randomly chosen universities, including nine public institutions, the Board of Audit and Inspection said the institutions had habitually manipulated their accounting books over the past five years to justify steep rises in tuition expenses.

All universities in Vietnam must publish their financial accounts and information about educational standards on their websites by 15 April, the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Education and Training told a conference in Hanoi this month.

In a bid to encourage transparency and stamp out corruption and fraud in universities, India's education ministry is preparing guidelines that will for the first time force private higher education institutions to make their accounts public.

Last December, 1,055 high school communities around Mexico – comprising almost 1.3 million students – engaged in a transparency and accountability exercise. This involves each principal of public high schools completing three electronic forms covering more than 100 indicators. These range from income and expenditure, to enrolment and academic performance, to the condition of school equipment and infrastructure.

The ongoing Government audit of schools across the country has unearthed massive abuse of levies collected from parents and guardians purportedly to fund development of learning infrastructure. From the 1 800 (18 percent) schools audited so far, there are indications of massive doctoring of accounting records by the schools.