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In South Africa, an incident at a school in Soweto revived the debate over false teacher qualifications. This week, a former primary school teacher stabbed a director who had suspended him. The teacher was dismissed after the school discovered, following a complaint from parents, that he had lied about his qualifications and had no diploma. According to the South African Council of Educators, dozens or even hundreds of teachers lie about their qualifications.

Two teachers have been arrested after practicing at Seme Secondary school for eight and two years’ respectively. They got their jobs by using fake qualifications. It is said that the Mpumalanga Department of Education suffered a combined loss of more than R2.4m. The department apparently became suspicious about their qualifications in 2017 and asked them to resubmit their qualifications. The two will return to the Volkrust Regional Court on February 6.

Three teachers were placed in prison for conspiracy and examination malpractice. They disobeyed the Uganda Examinations Board’ code of conduct and revealed the content of the 2018 Primary Leaving Examinations paper and then sold them to different schools in Buyende and Kamuli districts.

A teacher was arrested after stealing examination papers during a sitting exam conducted by the West African Council. Six of his students reported to the police that the teacher mandated them to extract sheets from the Math and Science question booklets and sneaked them out of the testing center.

The Teachers Service Commission (TSC) has launched a new biometric enrolment and validation of teachers system intended to address staff shortages and prevent the use of fake degrees. Pre-loaded data from the TSC payroll system will be validated when the teachers provide physical documents such as an enrolment certificate, national identity card, letter of first and last appointment together with their academic and professional certificates. This pilot registration took off in 143 schools in seven counties.