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Examination malpractice has a negative effect on Liberian society and its national development effort. It leads to an irreversible loss of credibility, and has negative consequences on the individuals and institutions of learning, leading to moral decadence, and brain drain and it discourages hard work among Liberian Students. Its impact is visibly seen in the type of human resources that the education system has produced.
Education is the bedrock of every society, but, there is a decline in the quality of graduates from secondary schools in Liberia. The collusion among students, impersonation, inscription, and bribery during the time of examination have undermined the fabric of the Society. Bishops and many church leaders have alarmed about the quality of school products, which portends danger for national development in Liberia.
The Faith and Justice Network (FJN) wants societal re-engineering and re-orientation to revamp moral values, retraining and reassessment of teachers to curb examination malpractice through aggressive campaigns with student leaders and educating all the stakeholders about the dangers. FJN sees examination as feedback for the students to ascertain the level of knowledge acquisition that serves as a measure of knowledge retention by the students. Misconduct or irregularity distorts this feedback mechanism and gives a false outcome of the learning process in Liberia.
The goal of the initiative is to promote moral integrity in schools and combat corrupt activities such as examination malpractice in schools to build a better future generation. The fight against corruption cannot be realized if examination malpractice continues to be rampant in Liberia.
The FJN conducted A One-Day Corruption Free-School Leadership workshop on Friday, April 28th, 2023. The workshop brought together over 85 students, teachers, and parents at the Lutheran Church in Liberia Conference Hall, Monrovia. The workshop aimed to educate club members on the causes of examination malpractice, the signing of a code of conduct, and sharing tools to tackle corruption in 15 schools in Monsterrado County, Liberia.
The Deputy Minister of the Ministry of Youth and Sports, Hon. Isaac Doe served as the Keynote Speaker. In his speech, he outlined strategies to mitigate academic malpractices in Secondary Schools in order to build a Peaceful Nation. Also, Prof. Isaac Saye-Lakpoh Zawolo, Superintendent of the Monrovia Consolidation School System (MCSS) shared the MCCSS’s Existing Policies, Mechanism, Guidelines, and Procedures for Zero Tolerance on Academic Malpractices and Ethical Transgressions in the Liberian School System. The two key speakers alluded to the collective efforts of all stakeholders (students, parents, teachers, government, and school administrators) to fight against the disease called “CORRUPTION”.
Four Peer Collaborators of the corruption–free School campaign shared their experiences on how to use the Code of Conduct, Handbook, and Manual to appeal to the consciences of all stakeholders in the education sector to promote a corruption-free educational system for a nation purged of corruption. These handbooks and campaign manuals emphasized the importance of the campaign, laid out clear objectives, and encouraged pupils to build “corruption free-schools” for a happy nation under the slogan, “Build Corruption Free Schools and Have a happy nation”.
The campaign manual has a seven-step approach based on the assumption that the formation of corruption-free clubs is the most effective way to carry out a successful campaign in schools. These steps include contacting FJN/Campaign Coordinator, appointing main collaborators, forming clubs, electing officers and appointing patrons, holding meetings & activities, inaugurating the club, executing campaign activities, and presenting the annual report.
At the end of the workshop, students were grouped into a team of four to identify academic malpractices in the Liberian School System. Each group was given a unique area to identify malpractice. Each group agreed that a country that becomes notorious for examination malpractice loses international credibility. The implication is that documents or certificates emanating from such country will be treated with suspicion, causing a lot of embarrassment and suffering to individuals, families, and the nation.
