The Ministry in charge of Education hosted a press briefing, this Wednesday in Abidjan, to provide more information and details on the many cases of fraud recorded in the 2019 Baccalaureate session. This, "in order to remove all ambiguity within the population and avoid damaging the credibility of the Ivorian diploma, at the international level" said Ibrahima Kourouma, Inspector General of the General Inspectorate at the Ministry of National Education.
From this meeting with the media, it appears that this secondary school leaving exam was peppered with 6,250 cases of fraud for 273,342 candidates. Cases of fraud observed during the composition, during the correction and during the deliberations. At the end of these different stages, 45 cards containing evidence of fraud were collected, incriminating 60% of official candidates and 40% of independent candidates. And Abidjan is the city with the highest fraud rate.
“Fraud persists and its magnitude is increasing. Fighting against it is a common duty. We want examinations. We want children to be admitted. But not at any price! At the risk of garnering society as a whole. What can we expect from a worker who owes his position to fraud and cheating?” asks Ibrahima Kourouma, Inspector General of the General Inspectorate at the Ministry of National Education.
In 2018, 1,515 cases of fraud were recorded for 256,452 candidates compared to 208 cases for 242,900 candidates in 2017. If this scourge increased from 0.1% in 2017 to 2.3% in 2019 worries, it is especially the strategies used by fraudsters that surprise more than one. Classic, ingenious methods, to the most unthinkable, with the use of smartphones, at the request of parents and with the complicity of certain actors in education.
Creation of a group of fraudsters on social networks, sculpture of a table to stick a telephone on it, smartphone hidden in a calculator, corrections to subjects camouflaged in bread (the sandwich strategy), in garbage cans, in umbrellas, in hair, in underwear... these are some of the modus operandi of fraudsters. Fraud in all these states.
In Côte d'Ivoire, any exam candidate guilty of fraud is expelled from the exam center and risks a ban on composing for a period of 1 to 5 years and a prison sentence. Ditto for the actors of education who, in addition, can be struck off the staff of the public service or the withdrawal of the authorization to teach and follow-up of examination for the actors of the private sector.