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A NSW government minister has launched a blistering attack on the federal government's administration of the scandal-ridden private vocational education sector. The sector has been plagued by allegations of dodgy private providers recruiting tens of thousands of students through free laptops and targeting illiterate, disabled students to sign them up to tens of thousands of dollars worth of taxpayer-funded student debt through the federal government's HECS-style VET-FEE help program.

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.

The Minister of Primary and Secondary Education last week slammed the parents for paying Form One entrance examination fees saying they did that at their own peril as the Government has set an enrolment date for all the schools in the country. He said the entrance exams were banned long back by his ministry and have remained illegal and should not be left to continue. Enrolment of Form One students for next year started yesterday with parents expected to use their children's Grade Seven results.

The president and CEO of a private college that catered to foreign students has been sentenced to 16 years in prison for defrauding the Department of Homeland Security by issuing phony visa-related documents to international students in exchange for tuition and fee.

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.

Alberta's auditor-general says Medicine Hat College's international education division has been an out-of-control programme that has put the college at "reputational, legal and financial risk". The Auditor-Generals report released last Tuesday shows a record of irregular contracts, questionable expenses and dubious academic standards for the C$1.7-million programme, which focuses on attracting foreign students from multiple countries, and works in partnership with three Chinese institutions, to offer courses overseas for Chinese students who can then transfer to Medicine Hat College.