Fighting Corruption in Education: A Call for Sector Integrity Standards

Abstract

Education today is a high-stake sector and increasingly vulnerable to corruption. Yet, despite all efforts there is still no certainty on how to best protect it from “harm”. The problem is partially due to a lack of consensus on what constitutes malpractice in education. The article argues in favor of mobilizing new insights from education research and anti-corruption policy for the development of sector standards of integral behavior. It discusses a systemic, service based approach around which this could be done and the responsibility of education practitioners and policy makers in the endeavor. It also suggests that measures to prevent corruption in education should be more sector-specific and target not only criminal offenses, but also “softer”, yet equally harmful forms of malpractice.

Keywords: Institutional Corruption, anticorruption, corruption in education, education sector integrity, integrity standards, integrity of education systems, corruption prevention