In Tanzania the focus on education has been to enhance self-reliance and increase productivity of the country. This allows a few of the better brains to progress beyond the self-reliance sphere to become contributors as succesful professionals, executives, businessmen or politicians.

Good grades along with fine performances in extra-curricular activities enable faster progress in the academic world but education cannot be gauged by only good grades. Rather it should encourage the grooming of a child into a dependable, honest and well-behaved member of society. Educationists discourage education that only focuses on passing examinations because this encourages a bigoted approach by students who studiously cram subject matter in order to pass examinations but ultimately fail to counter real-life problems that often call for a deeper analysis and wider consideration of situations rather than encouraging a bookish one-way approach.

The news last week of “serious irregularities” in the manner the last Standard Seven national examinations were conducted at the Kinondoni Primary School in Dar es Salaam is a cause for worry because it proves just how wrong some of our entrusted officials have their priorities. The last national examinations were held countrywide last November and due to the irregularities found, different criteria were used to select pupils from this school to join Form One. Instead of assessing them on marks they scored in the national examinations, the selection was based on pupils’ day-to-day performance assessment reports from standards Five to Seven and their performance in the Mock Examinations.

The irregularities pointed out refered to examination papers of many pupils from different streams who had similar wrong answers. The uniformity of incorrect answers reflected that the pupils were either provided with the answers before the examinations, or the answers were written for or read to them during examinations.

Leakages are a serious offence and there should therefore be harsher punishments for those who are involved. The root cause of the problem is an erosion of ethics by officials entrusted to manage the examinations be it in the National Examinations Council or the Ministry of Education who are in a position to collude with school officials in order to make a few shillings from students who are tempted to obtain fine grades to impress their family and friends.

Why would school officials allow leakages? One reason is temptation for money. The nobility of the teaching profession has been eroded by harsh economic realities, which have tempted some teachers to indulge in unethical practices as the economic condition of the teachers worsens and job opportunities shrink.

Another reason for the leakages could be falling standards in the school which prompts management to condone leakages assuming that good results will help to cover up otherwise serious problems in their school. Falling standards could also prompt desperate students and parents to find ways of fraudulently bypassing the standard examination-based system because they know that without passing exams, students cannot pursue higher education or secure admission to training institutions.

Through cheating, standards are badly compromised and when this happens at a higher level, say for a university degree, the new graduate is utterly helpless when employed because the expertise needed is lacking. This leads to lack of personal progress or even termination from employment, the ultimate price to pay for taking a short cut to achieving educational glories. Parents need to realise this and they need to make their children aware that there are no short cuts in education. Education involves sacrifices, devotion and hard work and the end is often grim for those who seek temporary glories by way cheating.

Those who deceive students by encouraging them to take such short cuts do commit a grave offence of misguiding the country’s youths. Sadly this is often done in consensus with parents. While cheating officials have to be punished, parents have an important role to play to guide their children away from unethical behaviour.