Female pupils and students are being asked to sleep with educators for good grades.

This and other shocking forms of corruption have been revealed by Corruption Watch, a non-profit organisation that reports on corruption in the country.

The “Sound the Alarm” report highlights 3,667 reports of education-related corruption received between 2012 and 2021. These complaints reveal that graft and corruption persist in certain areas of the education sector in SA, despite the numerous policies and laws in place intended to provide unimpeded access to education.

Education-related corruption includes widespread misappropriation of resources, acts of bribery, sextortion, abuse of authority and blatant flouting of employment and procurement processes.

The report looked at more than 36,000 cases involving 3,667 people, including students, pupils, parents, the elderly who act as guardians and caregivers, and other parties who stood witness.

According to a statement by Corruption Watch on Thursday, this sample represents about 10% of the total number of reports it receives and “gives us a glimpse as to what is taking place in mainly primary and secondary schools”.

The organisation received 3,417 reports from primary and secondary schools, 183 from sector education and training authority institutions (Setas) and 67 from technical, vocational, education and training (TVET) colleges.

Across these sectors it found that the most pervasive forms of corruption were:

• misappropriation of resources (43%) including reports of theft, embezzlement of funds and misuse of resources;
• maladministration (17.1%) including mismanagement of resources and wasteful and fruitless expenditure;
• abuse of authority (14.2%) including the victimisation of whistle-blowers;
• procurement irregularities (12.3%) including the solicitation and acceptance of kickbacks in tender processes; and
• employment irregularities (12.1%) including sextortion, bribery for jobs and flouting of recruitment processes.

Corruption Watch senior researcher and author of the report Melusi Ncala said: “What is particularly striking about these heart-wrenching accounts is the willingness of ordinary people – whether parents, guardians, learners, students, workers or professionals – to speak up against brazen acts of corruption.

“Equally conspicuous is the persistent failure of the government and law enforcement to act against those educators, principals, administrators, unions and board members implicated in corrupt activities, usually motivated by personal greed.”

The types of corruption and implicated parties vary according to the institution.

Schools suffer most from misappropriation of resources (45%), maladministration (17%) and abuse of authority (15%), “with principals and school governing body members implicated as the primary culprits”.

“Alarmingly, incidents of bribery and extortion are also prevalent, including allegations of sextortion, along with employment irregularities,” says the report.

Sextortion is where women and girls are forced to provide sexual favours to obtain good grades. 

Most of this type of corruption is exposed by whistle-blowers.

The most common corruption relates to feeding schemes, where procurement processes are flouted and favouritism and nepotism are practised, with principals recruiting friends and family to administration posts.

Most of the incidents of corruption at schools come from Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal and the Eastern Cape.

At Setas most of the corruption comes from procurement irregularities (30%), followed by maladministration (27%) and misappropriation of resources (31%).

“Again it is people in positions of power who are seen to solicit bribes, flout recruitment processes and disrupt the rollout of training programmes and learnerships,” the report says.

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