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A federal grand jury in Kansas indicted a former college-basketball coach last month on charges that he arranged for his players to receive phony academic credit and stole $120,000 in Pell Grants. The former coach faces a total of 51 years in prison and over $1.5-million in fines if found guilty of all counts.

The West African Examinations Council says it has not recorded any case of examination leakage in five years. It also denied knowledge of the existence of "special exam centers". The centers were allegedly created by some principals and secondary school proprietors for their candidates who are compelled to pay fees higher than the official fees charged by WAEC. The money is reportedly used for lobbying officials of the council to release the examination question papers to the centers ahead of the official time of the examination.

Le Conseil interuniversitaire de l'Afrique de l'Est (IUCEA) est sur le point de développer un système destiné à normaliser les diplômes proposés par les universités locales. Selon le secrétaire de direction du Conseil, la plupart des Kényans souhaitent intégrer une université en Ouganda du fait de coûts d'inscription inférieurs à ceux de leurs universités locales. Cependant, ils ne s'assurent pas de la conformité de la qualité de l'enseignement dispensé par les universités ougandaises aux normes en vigueur.

A report examining governments contracting for the delivery of education services finds a wide range of models have been implemented around the world. The report, 'Contracting for the delivery of education services: A typology and international examples', published by the Education Forum, states that educational services contracting can have many benefits such as raising the efficiency of service delivery and spending.

According to an opposition leader, the businessman Agarwal's pledge last week of $1-billion to set up Vedanta University, in the South Indian state of Orissa, is a gimmick to divert attention from his corrupt mining deal with the state's government. The $1-billion pledge, which if realized would be the largest gift ever made to a higher-education institution, is intended to create a multidisciplinary elite university for 100,000 students that would open in 2008.

An auditor has been charged for having changed business records in an effort to help conceal the theft of more than $11 million. The district superintendent is accused of stealing more than $2 million; the assistant superintendent for $4 million and a former school accounting clerk for $780,000. Money shall have been used on artwork, jewellery, foreign trips and home mortgages. The scandal that has resulted in a state-wide changes in the way school finances are audited.

The governor of the northern province of Nampula has ordered an enquiry of financial mismanagement at the city's main secondary school. The governor ordered that the provincial finance department and the education inspectorate produce a report within a week on the use of about 100 million meticais (about 5,000 US dollars) that is allocated monthly for the maintenance of the school. The school is suffering from broken windows and a shortage of furniture in some classrooms, just four years after it had undergone thorough rehabilitation.

The legal advisor to the Eduardo Mondlane University has denied that there was anything improper in giving scholarships to people who do not work at the university. In 2003 alone, over 147,000 US dollars, money that should have been used to send teachers to take further degrees abroad, in order to build up the institutional capacity of the university, were allegedly spent instead on the Vice-Chancellor's daughter, two children of the head of the universities public relations and 16 others.

Fifteen of the 80 students enrolled with the Namibia College of Open Learning will not write their end of year exams after a teacher allegedly misappropriated their examination fees. It is suspected he used the money to settle personal accounts. The students will not be able to sit their exams this year as the fraud was discovered too late.

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.