Corruption in education systems in developing countries: what it is doing to the young

Presented during 10th International Anti-Corruption Conference at a workshop on "Attacking corruption in education systems: what is it doing to our young?", this paper focuses on five typical occurrences of corruption: (i) absenteeism, where teachers, although employed, fail to actually be present at the school and perform their work; (ii) privatization, which often leads to everything in the school having to be paid for (bribe for); (iii) the procurement of textbook, an area where there is the greatest corruption in the school system, which causes textbooks to become more expensive than necessary and deteriorates their teaching value; (iv) construction of educational buildings, which provides a convenient source of income for many public officials in the form of kickback, with the effect that many contracts are never finished, and the schools are not built; (v) foreign suppliers from developed countries often sending only poor quality material, or forgetting to deliver vital components of expensive materials, causing them never to be able to be used and costing developing countries hundreds of millions of dollars.