Education is vulnerable to corruption. Despite numerous initiatives and projects to address the corruption risks, in many countries education is still perceived as being among the sectors most prone to corruption.
In an effort to tackle the challenge in a more comprehensive and systematic way, a number of countries have carried out in-depth assessments in their education systems over the past few years (Serbia, Tunisia, Armenia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan). The work took place in partnership with the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the Center for Applied Policy, and the Open Society Foundations, and relied on a methodology that interconnects several research protocols to collect evidence of policy shortcomings that create opportunities and incentives for education participants to engage in corruption.
The country assessments were driven by an assumption that corruption in education is not an isolated phenomenon that affects the sector “from outside”, but a consequence of deeper-rooted problems in the education system itself, which affect the learning experience and environment of stakeholders in ways that may compromise the integrity of their behaviour.
According to a common definition, integrity stands for a “pattern of conduct”, a way of acting which is in line with values and principles associated with a higher goal and leading to its attainment. In education, integrity could be described as the continued commitment of education participants and institutions to act in accordance with values and principles that apply to education, without engaging in corruption.
Our thematic study seeks to identify whether values and principles that matter for integrity, might be applicable across national borders and from there, whether selected patterns of problematic behaviour in education can be qualified as violations of education integrity irrespective of cultural, historical and political differences between countries.
