System rewards wrongdoers

 Falsifying academic transcripts and certificates

The BMP is silent on falsifying achievement documents like certificates possibly because it’s a matter after the students leave school and such behaviour falls outside of its jurisdiction. 

However, cheating in examination shows there is sufficient motivation for students to take the risk to cheat just to make an attempt to improve their grades and secure a place in a tertiary institution. 

A better Grade Point Average is critical for selection into universities and colleges and many students want to enhance their chances at any cost. An analysis was provided under ‘Exam Cheating’ discussion earlier on. Today there are more educated parents who want the best for their children in terms of education.  

They invest heavily in their children’s education. 

Parents expect their investment to bear fruit when their children enter a university or a college. They demand from their children nothing less than a place in a university with a view to getting a paid job after graduation and possibly an improved quality of life.

Poya (2013) reported that falsified documents were submitted by applicants for police officer recruitment. It stated that the documents were doctored to meet the eligibility criteria. It stated: ‘These documents were false and obtained not by completing Grade 12 but from the streets by scanning from the computer shops’. Esop (2013) pointed out that stu­dents spend more time on the phones texting, calling, updating on the social media, accessing pornographic sites on the internet and less is spent on their school lesson, which may have a detrimental effect on their performance in tests and exams.  

Students know they spent more time on activities that are less important (i.e, drinking homebrew, smoking marijuana, fighting, swearing, etc.) and have not actually learnt well in school to be confident and competent in sitting for their exams. 

They instead resort to cheating and if that fails – they resort yet again to doctoring their certificates at great risk of being found out. 

The Department of Education (2011) instituted an internal investigation inquiring into cheating in School Certificate Examinations which revealed that Higher School Certificates were forged or grades altered (See Figure 4).  

The grades are altered with the intention of upgrading their original grades with the intention of securing a place at a tertiary institution.  

Even those who apply for ‘Statement of Results’ offer bribes to the MSB officers to ‘upgrade’ their original grades on the certificate issued.

Bakung (2012) stated that the purpose for the existence of the cult grouping system is: ‘To preserve their identity, for security, and welfare’.  The members of the group swear allegiance to their group and defend or protect the members of the group and the group as a whole. 

The Behaviour Management Policy pointed out that as part of cult group and generation systems identified many activities which include : ‘… making high performing student complete assignments for other group members’.  

High performing students will naturally perform well in examination condition and if below average students have been depending on their brighter colleagues all those years then, cheating in exams and doctoring certificates is bound to happen.  

Cheating, offering bribes to obtain exam questions and answer sheets, and doctoring achievement results are clear disrespect for lawful authority and rules and guidelines in force. One wonders whether this disrespect for authority is a consequence of cult and generation group infiltration and influence.  

Bakung (2012) study pointed out that ‘Strong disobedience to the (formal school) authorities’ is one of the four behaviours expected of the members of the generation group.  

Such a practice is very dangerous as future generations have been indoctrinated and cultured to be disrespectful to authorities not only in schools but elsewhere after school.

Factors contributing towards cheating in exams

Cheating in examinations in Papua New Guinea are driven by many factors, some of these factors include :  

• a): Stiff competition for limited study places in tertiary institutions in PNG has compelled the parties concerned to use any means to enhance their chances to gain admission into a tertiary institution;
• (b): Inter-school rivalry force schools to aggressively compel the teachers and students to find ways to maximise their students’ chances of gaining admission into institutions of higher learning. In that way the number of students entering a university or a college from their school will be the justification to claim academic superiority over their rivals, which in turn, becomes the basis for the school to gain political favour in terms of resource allocations;   
• c): The curriculum model used and the resourcing required to effectively deliver that curriculum (eg OBE) to the students does very little to empower students and teachers to be adequately taught and prepared for a fairer examination.  This point was argued in the previous Focus articles that one reaps what one sows. Little investments were made to help develop and improve quality education through provision of library books or prescribed textbooks, improvement in teachers’ professional development, and improvement in teacher per student ratio or even textbook per student ratio.
• d): The growing and ever per­vasive cult groupings and their dark cultural practices giving false sense of hope to students that their living and studying at the school is guaranteed success. The students are told at recruitment stage that the cult group will take care of their needs, promising them that the group not only have the brighter students in the school who will help them succeed at their study but have connections with people higher up who will provide them job opportunities or study places.  
• e): The deliberate corrupt practices by public officers tasked with the management and security of the examinations protocol. School authorities (teachers and principals in some schools) have colluded with officers of the Measurements Services Branch to smuggle exam questions out and even answer sheets to exam questions. Some of these exam papers have appeared on the streets where people are prepared to pay several thousands of kina.  There is already a buyer (demand) for that commodity (exam paper or answer sheet) and so the supplier will have to find a way of delivering the product. Examination security protocols were breached in order to distribute exam papers and their marking scheme or answer sheets to schools in advance.

Conclusion

There is confirmed official information and data available that cheating in examination is taking place in some of the schools in PNG.  

Cheating in examinations is ethically and morally wrong but by condoning the practice the system has demonstrated that the wrong doers are rewarded and honest and hardworking teachers and students are wrongly punished.  

The schools and their teachers, including the school principals who aided and abetted cheating in examinations, are rewarded for their roles when their students secured study places in higher education institutions. Many such teachers and principals remain in the system and are happily moving from one school to another from year to year. In that way the seed for cheating has been sown in the different schools. 

The majority of schools, teachers, and principals of schools where students didn’t cheat may not have earned the high GPA or even secured disproportionate places in higher education institutions than what they truly deserve knowing that the system is very unfair. 

Their honesty is a virtue that will make them stand tall among those who cheat.  

The unfair system rewards the wrong doer and punishes those who operate within the established system. The system is doing nothing to discourage the wrong practice from being repeated while the good practice is ignored. Authorities who are tasked to en­­sure the system works for the greater majority of the hardworking students and teachers are being compromised because of the false sense of self-worth gained through deceptive means such as cheating in the national examination or facilitation of cheating by teachers and principals. Hopefully the cheaters who gain admission on the basis of cheating in their examinations can be weeded out through natural selection processes based on their academic performances in the respective study programmes in the higher education institutions.  

Exam cheaters have the tendency to perfect their skill of cheating and they cannot stop at anything provided the environment is conducive.

There is a far greater need to improve the management and administration of the school certificate examinations and certification system.  Turning a blind eye to this issue is like allowing a cancer to grow and will eventually destroy the society because cheating would eventually become a norm. It is almost like a bush-fire and if it is not contained early enough then the forest is at the mercy of gusty change of wind directions which is likely to consume the whole area.  

Everyone knows that cheating in exams is ethically wrong but certain elements are defying the processes and protocols to encourage and facilitate cheating. Those who facilitate cheating in examinations are remaining in the system without being reprimanded or disciplined.  

Students who cheat enter into the institutions of higher learning and eventually enter the workforce with a qualification earned from cheating at school level. Just think of one job anywhere in the workforce where the individual at the helm has cheated his way into this job. This person has no moral values to guide him in his work.  

I am told of a student who had once cheated not at the examination room but bought his grades at a university by offering monetary inducement to his lecturer for a better grade in his final semester project is now heading a government office. 

His performance in that job speaks volumes of the destruction he created for others and aggrandisement created for himself and his band of selected cronies who all acquire unknown wealth at the expanse of honest citizens. Everyone has some perception of the consequences of cheating not only in examination rooms but elsewhere in offices and workplaces and still decide that nothing has ever happened. The recommendation of the internal investigation looking into cheating is echoed here.  ‘… that all recommendations made for all those officers implicated under the respective terms of references as highlighted under TOR eleven (11) be actioned swiftly and accordingly to safeguard and uphold the examination system of the Education Department’.  

A major reform in the management and administration of the examination and certification system is well overdue. While the Education Act is currently being reviewed, it would be timely to review the roles and functions of MSB in the light of cheating going on with a view to create an independent authority outside of the department but would still come under the auspices of the Minister for Education.  

Can this be done? Yes we can! Political and bureaucratic leaders have to reorient our thinking to be creative and to institute necessary reforms to improve the current situation that would bring credibility and integrity to the Higher School Certificate examination and certification system.