Corruption in the education sector
Where does corruption occur?
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Corruption in education occurs at the political, administrative (central and local), and classroom level. However, corruption is not the cause of all evils. What appears to be corruption may in fact be incompetence by key actors and/or inadequacies in the infrastructure they work under.
Corruption is a hidden transaction which the involved parties like to keep secret. The most widely condemned practices (e.g. kickbacks on government contracts) are also the most hidden, while more visible practices (e.g. forced private tutoring) tend to be more tolerated.
The examples below illustrate the fact that that the further up the system corruption occurs, the harder it is to detect and to prosecute the perpetrators.
At the policy level:
- Corruption afflicts the allocation of resources to the education budget, leaving the sector under-resourced.
- Decision-makers prefer hard investments (procurement, military hardware, large construction projects) instead of soft investments (e.g. the daily running costs of schools), because the former are more easily corrupted.
- Decision-making can be biased along ethnic lines and can go as far as political blackmail (“if you don’t vote for me, you won’t get the school” ).
At central ministry level:
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Grand corruption involves the diversion of funds from procurement, construction, and the lower levels of the system.
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Funds for educational institutions can be siphoned off at the administrative and political level by corrupt administrators, public officials and politicians even before they reach the schools.
At school and administrative level:
- Money and supplies are diverted before reaching the schools.
- Educators in the lower system may secure opportunities or avoid punishment through petty bribes.
- Corruption in teacher recruitment and promotion lowers the quality of public teaching.
- Parents may pay bribes to ensure their children’s school access, good grades and graduation.
- thnic or gender bias may occur to the disadvantage of certain pupils (e.g. the bypassing of objective student assessment criteria). This also constitutes an abuse of power, i.e. an act of corruption.
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In the late 1990s, it was reported from the Philippines that despite
significant public expenditure on textbooks, only 16% of children
actually received them. Education supplies were lost to payoffs,
under-deliveries, and overpricing. Unsurprisingly, the textbooks
were on sale at local markets. |
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Alessandra Fontana
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Donors’ Contributions to Anti-Corruption in the Education Sector| RECOMMENDED READING |
 Transparency International (2009) This report presents a regional overview of accountability and transparency in primary education management in seven African countries. It focuses on the effects of decentralisation policies on corruption levels and increased oversight and accountability, based on the presumption that bringing the management of the sector closer to the user leads to increased monitoring and control and decreased graft and corruption. The findings and recommendations are interesting for those working to implement decentralisation in poor countries. Maximizing the performance of education systems: The case of teacher absenteeism Patrinos, H and Kagia, R (2007) Teachers correspond to the most important feature of the education system, not only because their salaries account for most of expenditures in such sector but also because they are the gatekeepers of education service.Teachers’ absenteeism is associated with a reduction of pupils' achievement, overall denigration of school’s performance as well as the provision of negative models to students. Therefore, losses associated with it pose a threat to the country’s growth potential. This paper presents various findings and and studies, as well as strategies and examples on how to combat absenteeism Guidelines for the design and effective use of teacher codes of conducts Poisson, M (2009) To increase the professionalization of teacher, several countries have developed codes of conduct in the education sector. But even when such codes exist, their impact is sometimes questionable due to a variety of reasons. UNESCO has developed comprehensive guidelines not only to guide countries willing to design (or review) their code but also to implement and monitor how the code is used at all levels in the sector, including its integration into teachers’ education and professional development. |
| RESOURCES FROM CIHE |
The Higher Education Corruption Monitor Academic Corruption in The News:
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