Understanding and Influencing Students’ Behaviour 2021

The study was carried out during the Year Zero of Students Acting for Accountability and Quality of Education, funded by the Global Partnership for Education through Education Out Loud (Operational Component 2), to prepare the project with the students themselves. It looked at CERC’s Integrity Club model in South Kivu, where the clubs have run since 2017, and in Kinshasa, where the project would bring them.

Between June and July 2021, CERC ran 39 participative workshops with 534 young people and interviewed 89 teachers and head teachers in 24 schools, with 16 further key informant interviews. A literature review on youth civic engagement and behaviour change put the findings in perspective.

The questions followed CERC’s 4E approach to behaviour – Enable, Encourage, Engage, Exemplify. For this edition, the findings are also assessed against the six OECD-DAC evaluation criteria used by the World Bank and the European Union: relevance, coherence, effectiveness, efficiency, impact and sustainability.

Key findingsWilling young people, held back by barriers

• Enable. Young people value integrity and want to change their schools and society; personal development and, for the poorest, monetary compensation motivate them. Travel, lack of equipment and food, and limited access to information hold them back, as does fear – of being targeted, arrested or, for girls, sexually harassed.
• Encourage. Where focal teachers and head teachers are active, the climate for monitoring is positive and students gain confidence and awareness of their rights. CERC’s support was too rare and too thin, and cost it some trust; families discourage their children unless they have attended a sensitisation session.
• Engage. Local authorities, project staff and community members show little commitment, which demoralises monitors; club attendance falls over time.
• Exemplify. Some monitoring has entered school life – such as checking teachers’ punctuality – but long-term mechanisms are rare, and former monitors are not followed.

Overall assessmentA relevant model that needs closer support

The model is relevant and moderately effective; its coherence with other actors, the efficiency of CERC’s support and the sustainability of monitoring are moderately unsatisfactory; impact could not be rated with a one-off study.

Key recommendationsFive priorities

1. Provide continuous training to monitors and teachers, and training for non-monitors; connect schools through exchange visits.
2. Keep involving the media to engage young people, communities and authorities.
3. Work with key stakeholders so that communities understand and support monitoring and the clubs.
4. Give students further incentives to attend Integrity Club programmes.
5. Carry out further research on the sexual harassment reported by girls, and protect them.

Rating scale: satisfactory, moderately satisfactory, moderately unsatisfactory, unsatisfactory. A criterion is not rated when the evidence of a one-off study is not enough to judge it.

The modelIntegrity Clubs

CERC is an independent Congolese organisation that tackles corruption by training communities to act with integrity, to demand better services and to make sure public funds are not wasted. Its integrity education in schools rests on one idea: lasting change comes when young people are encouraged to act with integrity early and are given the tools to do so.

In selected secondary schools, CERC sets up Integrity Clubs of at least 15 students and two teachers. Students and teachers are trained together for two days; the club then meets every two weeks, and after three months starts monitoring projects and services. Students become Young Integrity Builders, able to identify, raise and monitor corruption issues. With little access to the internet, they collect data on paper.

Integrity clubs exist in many countries, promoting active citizenship and the fight against corruption. CERC’s are different because students do not only learn about integrity: they practise it by monitoring.

Since 2017From Uvira and Bukavu to Kinshasa

In October 2017, CERC set out to establish Integrity Clubs in 55 schools of South Kivu. The study took place as CERC prepared Students Acting for Accountability and Quality of Education, which would extend the model to Kinshasa with the support of the Global Partnership for Education through Education Out Loud.

The DRCA fragile context

The Democratic Republic of the Congo covers 2.3 million km² and is rich in natural resources, yet most of its people live in poverty. It ranked 175th of 189 countries on the UNDP Human Development Index and 170th of 180 on Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index in 2020. The east of the country has lived through more than twenty years of violent conflict.

The 4E approachEnable, Encourage, Engage, Exemplify

• Enable – make it possible: remove barriers and ensure the ability to act – training monitors, providing monitoring tools, setting up Education Clusters.
• Encourage – give incentives and disincentives, and show the benefits of change: good performance by a contractor is visible, stories of good service delivery are shared, monitoring is socially recognised and makes young people more employable.
• Engage – involve people in communities early, so that they understand what to do and feel a personal and shared responsibility, through community media and events.
• Exemplify – show shared responsibility: authorities build beneficiary feedback into their practice, contracts take account of performance recorded in EduCheck, and Integrity Clubs run effectively in schools and communities.

The Integrity Clubs Fix Score Survey (2021) showed that students who monitor need to feel that they contribute to their community, and that monitoring projects is what first moves them to get involved. CERC wanted to understand more deeply what inspires young people to become monitors, and how other stakeholders help them become or remain monitors. The findings were to be tested in the programmes CERC would run with Education Out Loud.

ScopeSouth Kivu and Kinshasa, four groups of young people

The study covers South Kivu, where CERC has worked with secondary schools for longest, and Kinshasa. It looks at four groups: members of Integrity Clubs; secondary school students who are not in a club; university students; and young people in neither secondary school nor university.

Research questionsFour questions

1. What motivates young people to become local monitors, and what holds them back?
2. What incentives could keep them monitoring the delivery of community projects over three years?
3. Who are the other important stakeholders in supporting youth monitoring?
4. What kind of recognition matters to young people?

Evaluation matrixThe research questions and the OECD-DAC criteria

WorkshopsParticipative workshops with young people

Workshops of about three hours, with 15 participants, were designed to make young people take part rather than listen: warm-up games, role play, a graffiti wall, a spider-web diagram of the people who influence them and a World café in which each participant ranked the motivating and discouraging factors with ten stickers. A timeline showed when monitors felt most motivated, and an anonymous sheet let everyone add what they did not want to say aloud. Groups were mixed by gender.

One format was designed for monitors and former monitors, another for non-monitors, with an introduction to integrity and to monitoring. After the workshops in South Kivu, the non-monitor format was simplified, as it proved too complicated for the time available.

SampleThe plan

SampleThe young people reached

All 39 planned school workshops were held: 27 with Integrity Clubs in Bukavu and Uvira – 23 active clubs and 4 groups of former monitors – and 12 with non-monitors in Kinshasa schools without a club.

InterviewsKey informants

Clubs need the support of local authorities, parents, school management and the managers of monitored projects. CERC therefore interviewed 89 teachers and head teachers in 24 schools, and held 16 key informant interviews with monitors, teachers, head teachers, parents and project staff. Tools were developed and translated into French by CERC staff; data were collected in French, and in Lingala in Kinshasa.

LiteratureA review after the fieldwork

The literature review was deliberately carried out after data collection, so that CERC would not go into the field expecting to find particular answers: the research is exploratory, not designed to test hypotheses. Articles were found through Google Scholar on behaviour change communication with youth, motivations for and barriers to youth civic engagement, and community youth development.

AnalysisThree categories

Independent consultants analysed the data by hand under three categories – motivating factors, inhibiting factors and the removal of barriers to action – identifying recurring themes and adding new ones as they emerged. The ranking exercises were grouped into motivating and inhibiting factors.

LimitationsWhat the study cannot show

• A one-off (cross-sectional) study says nothing about the long-term impact and sustainability of monitoring.
• Findings apply to places with a similar context; only 23 clubs were active in South Kivu at the time, and only 4 groups of former monitors took part.
• Logistics limited preparation in some places and follow-up in Kinshasa; some nuances may have been lost in translation from Lingala.
• Most of the literature comes from Western countries; studies from developing countries mostly concern health behaviour.

LiteratureWhat other studies show

Young people take part in civic action when they feel a personal connection to an issue. Incentives can motivate them, but are not the main reason: belonging to a group matters more, and so does the encouragement of friends and family. Once they see that their concerns are shared, they move to collective action. They value the skills they gain for their careers and studies, and grow in confidence and leadership.

The barriers are a lack of opportunities – linked to school resources and to the exclusion of some students – and the feeling that adults will not listen. Adults, communities and schools must create an encouraging environment, work in partnership with young people and give them training and tools.

Agents of changeA clear understanding of integrity

Monitors and non-monitors alike gave many examples of acting with or without integrity, from quarrels and drunkenness to theft, sexual assault and killings – some seen in their communities, others heard in the media. Every group named the wish to be an agent of change as a motivation.

“It is effortless because I have the desire to see things changed, I have freedom, and I am not afraid.”

“I like to do things that benefit the community, and I will benefit from new knowledge.” – A non-monitor

Girls and boys debated how serious some issues are. Pregnancy outside marriage was ranked among the most serious, because of what it costs a young woman: leaving school, discrimination and stigma.

Personal developmentLearning by doing

In one group of 15 new monitors, nine named new knowledge and skills as their first motivation. Teachers confirmed that monitoring lets students practise what they learn in citizenship classes – which the literature also recommends.

InclusionNot yet for everyone

The model reaches the poorest young people less well: for them, volunteering is a job that should be paid. Students in their final year drop out to focus on exams, and students with disabilities can attend school meetings but not field visits – one school has a monitor with a disability who cannot take part when the club goes into the field.

Rating: satisfactory. The model matches what young people want; it needs to adapt to those who face the greatest barriers.

SchoolsTeachers and head teachers

Fourteen groups of monitors found their teachers’ messages of encouragement, sensitisation and courage motivating, and head teachers who accept the clubs have a positive influence. One monitor thanked a teacher who accompanies the monitors and a head teacher who lets them organise activities. As the literature shows, change needs young people and adults to work together.

Monitored servicesLittle cooperation

All the monitors interviewed said that the lack of information and the reluctance of project staff to share it made monitoring difficult. Without identification or letters of authorisation, they struggle to get in; appointments fail because staff are not there, and they feel devalued. Teachers named local authorities and project staff as the most discouraging actors for students.

Other actorsNo links yet

Non-monitors know others working on integrity: journalists, police, youth groups, churches, teachers, human rights activists, artists and poets who denounce a lack of integrity in songs, poems and artwork. They named two national youth movements, FILIMBI and LUCHA. CERC had no links with any of them. Young people also see these actors at risk of being arrested, killed or co-opted by politicians, and some see the police themselves as involved in corruption.

Rating: moderately unsatisfactory. Strong in schools with active teachers; weak with the services monitored, the authorities and other actors.

ResultsConfidence and rights

In schools with active focal teachers and supportive head teachers, students take part in the clubs’ activities, and those who monitor have gained confidence and awareness of their civil rights. Some monitoring has become part of school life, such as mechanisms to check that teachers arrive on time.

FearThe main barrier

The political environment is dangerous: young people feel they cannot speak freely, and monitoring is seen as risky. University students in particular fear being arrested, tortured or killed; the media report arrests and kidnappings of members of youth movements who demand accountability. Boys fear physical assault and arrest more; for girls, the threat is sexual harassment and assault. Poverty and illiteracy make young people more vulnerable still.

Yet in a group of 15 non-monitors in Bukavu, 14 were excited by the prospect of monitoring. University students were less excited and more intimidated. Boys felt girls were less exposed, because they are less often arrested and tortured; girls replied that boys benefit more from corruption in society and are less likely to be agents of change.

GirlsSexual harassment

Girl monitors described sexual harassment during monitoring: project staff expecting sex in exchange for information, and fellow monitors harassing them during visits. The format of the workshops and the sensitivity of the subject made it hard to learn more, but a head teacher confirmed it.

ResultsToo few successes to show

The two groups of monitors met in Bukavu could not give an example of success. Without success stories and without recognition from the community, monitors lose heart; community members ask them: “Do you think you will change this country?”

“Everybody is involved in corruption; we lack models.” – A non-monitor in Bukavu

Rating: moderately satisfactory. Real gains for students; results limited by fear, access to information and recognition.

CERC’s supportTraining and visits

Former monitors had received two days of training on citizenship and integrity, and were told they needed a refresher. None of the monitors felt sufficiently trained: one had received a single session with no follow-up; in another school a module was distributed but never reached the monitors. A teacher recommended three days of training instead of one, with more modules and documents.

The CERC project coordinator in Bukavu was praised as an influential figure who encouraged monitors to go on. But CERC had no active office in Bukavu – training and support were run from its headquarters in Kinshasa – and no office in Uvira since the end of the SHINE project. Although project staff had been recruited, none of the 27 schools met in Bukavu and Uvira had had a project visit in over a year.

CERC staff face their own constraints. The initial target of 140 schools proved very ambitious; schools needing a letter from the Ministry of Education meant working with more flexible schools; remote management of partnerships left long gaps between visits, so that project staff felt abandoned and teachers and students wondered where CERC was.

AllowancesMoney that did not come

Where CERC was absent, monitors did not receive their compensation – a lack of respect for their commitment, felt most strongly in poor neighbourhoods. Monitors had to pay for their own transport, and some suggested monitoring their own schools first, as this costs nothing. In one group of 15 new monitors, six named monetary compensation as their first motivation; among former monitors in Bukavu, the lack of allowances was keenly felt.

LogisticsSmall barriers, large effects

Monitors go to the field straight after school, without eating, and without transport fees; rain stops visits, as they have no clothing for it. They have no identification, no letters of authorisation and no T-shirts to show who they are. These may seem small things; their effect on the wish to monitor is great.

“I do not like going to monitor directly after school, as we come to school without eating.” – A monitor

Rating: moderately unsatisfactory. Support was too centralised, too rare and too thin for the needs of the clubs.

The signs are positive: monitors have gained knowledge, skills, confidence and awareness of their rights; teachers see students putting their citizenship lessons into practice; some schools now check teachers’ punctuality. A monitor active since October 2017 has monitored one project twice.

But the slow pace of change is a major reason why students stop. Secondary school students lose interest when they meet resistance and indifference from local authorities, teachers and community members; for many, the barriers outweigh the motivation.

Teachers could not say whether former monitors still monitor: there is no mechanism to track them. Former monitors may have moved on and still be monitoring, but this cannot be known – and the same is true of community monitors.

Not rated. The evidence of a one-off study is not enough to judge impact; positive signs need to be confirmed by tracking results over time.

FamiliesParents who discourage

All the young people who attended the workshops said that their parents were not involved in monitoring, and most parents actively discourage it: they believe it harms their children’s schooling, and girls are expected to do housework. In the final year, the pressure of exams makes parents even less supportive. Peers, too, question the time monitors spend on it. Parents who attended a sensitisation session on Integrity Clubs are more likely to support their children – as the literature also finds.

ClubsMomentum that fades

Clubs complained of low attendance and of immature, little engaged members, especially over time. Low engagement by peers, teachers and partner organisations explains this loss of momentum, and the low priority given to monitoring deters non-monitors.

The long termYoung people who move on

Young people leave to find work, to study further and, for girls, to marry. Few monitors have built long-term monitoring mechanisms, and without tracking of former monitors, CERC cannot know whether monitoring continues after the club.

Rating: moderately unsatisfactory. Without the support of families and communities, and without long-term mechanisms, monitoring depends on each new group of students.

EnableWilling, but afraid

Young people want to be agents of change in their schools and communities, and to reduce corruption, killings and theft. Personal development motivates them, and teachers see students practising what they learn in class. Monetary compensation is a strong motivator where poverty is high, but these young people then see monitoring as a job rather than volunteering. Fear is the greatest barrier – of arrest, murder or kidnapping, made worse by news about youth movements – and weighs most on older students such as those at university; for girls, the fear of sexual harassment and abuse, by project managers and by fellow monitors, comes on top.

EncourageTeachers support, CERC must do more

Focal teachers support monitors in schools, accompany them on visits and encourage them. CERC’s support was a demotivating factor: its office was far from the programme areas, so there were few trainings and little support for monitors and focal teachers. This links to the logistical barriers – transport, food after school – small barriers whose effect on students’ wish to monitor is great.

EngageFamilies and communities to win over

Monitoring takes time that students and families value highly. Families give little support, and less as students approach their final years. Few sensitisation activities have reached families and communities, but families who attended one were more likely to support monitoring.

ExemplifyLasting mechanisms to build

Despite the wish for change, few monitors have put long-term monitoring mechanisms in place, and with no tracking of former monitors, CERC cannot tell whether they go on monitoring, or with what impact.

1. Motivation is not what is missing. Young people want to change their communities; programmes should spend less effort persuading them and more removing what stops them.
2. Small barriers weigh heavily. A meal after school, transport, rain gear, an identity badge and a letter of authorisation decide whether a monitor goes to the field.
3. Support must be close and regular. Remote management, visits that stop and allowances not paid cost trust that is slow to rebuild; a work plan for project staff and regular contact are part of the model, not extras.
4. Teachers make the club. Focal teachers and head teachers are the strongest influence on students: their training and their networks are an investment in every club.
5. Families and communities must be brought in from the start. Parents who understand the clubs support their children; those who do not, discourage them.
6. Safety and gender must be designed in. Girls and boys face different risks; protection, risk analysis and a way to report harassment must exist before monitors go to the field.
7. Visible results keep young people going. Success stories, recognition and the media turn monitoring into something worth continuing.
8. Money cuts both ways. Allowances motivate the poorest youth but turn volunteering into a job; monitoring that costs little makes the model less dependent on them.
9. What is not tracked is lost. Without following results and former monitors, neither impact nor sustainability can be shown; targets must also be realistic – 140 schools proved too many.

Annex 1Workshops with young people

Bukavu, 14–24 June 2021 (15 Integrity Clubs): Institut Mulindwa, Institut la Promesse, Institut de Kadutu, Institut Matimanyi, Institut la Pépinière, Institut Hodari, Institut de la Trinité, Institut Bahati, Institut Olimba, Institut Bora, Institut Azma, Institut Karibu, Complexe scolaire Oméga/la Merveille, Institut Ukarimu and Institut Shukrani.

Uvira, 7–15 July 2021 (12 Integrity Clubs): Institut Kitundu, Institut d’Uvira, Institut Bakhita, Institut Adidja, Complexe scolaire de l’Unité, Institut Kalundu, Institut Kalimabenge, Institut Guido Maria Conforti, Institut Hekima, Lycée Umoja, Institut Action Kusaidia and Institut Nuru.

Kinshasa, 25 June – 7 July 2021 (12 schools without an Integrity Club): Institut Lisalisi, Complexe scolaire les Élites, Institut Saint-Damien, Complexe scolaire Ilunga, Complexe scolaire Betsaël Josué, Complexe scolaire Bomoko, École chrétienne Gracia, Complexe scolaire Tuendelee, Groupe scolaire Diela, Collège évangélique le Palmier, Institut Botosi and Collège Angela.

Annex 2Interviews with teachers and head teachers

Teachers and head teachers (or education directors) of 24 schools were interviewed between 16 June and 24 July 2021: 89 people, 50 teachers and 39 head teachers.

• Bukavu (11 schools): la Pépinière, Hodari, la Trinité, Bahati, Olimba, Bora, Azma, Karibu, Oméga/la Merveille, Ukarimu, Shukrani;
• Uvira (9 schools): Action Kusaidia, Nuru, Hekima, Guido Maria Conforti, Bakhita, Adidja, l’Unité, Kalundu, Kalimabenge;
• Kinshasa (4 schools): les Élites, Saint-Damien, Ilunga, Betsaël Josué.

Annex 3Workshop formats

Monitors and former monitors (about 3 hours 15, 15 participants): 1. awareness and perceptions – how would you advertise the role of a monitor, and what would you tell a candidate about its difficulties? 2. motivation and support – successes and barriers acted out by two groups, then a discussion on overcoming challenges; 3. influence – a spider-web diagram of the people connected to what monitors like and dislike; 4. summary and ranking – a World café of motivating and discouraging factors, ranked with ten stickers each, and a timeline of motivation; an anonymous feedback sheet throughout.

Non-monitors (about 3 hours 20, 15 participants): 1. an introduction to integrity, Integrity Clubs and monitoring by project staff, and examples of acting without integrity, ranked from 1 to 5; 2. the qualities a monitor needs, and reactions to the concept of monitoring; 3. motivation – where participants stand between “exciting” and “intimidating”, and their reactions to stories of barriers; 4. a World café and ranking, as for monitors.

Annex 4Interview guides

Guides were written for current and former monitors (activities, motivations, support, training, what would make them stop, what they and the community gain, conditions to continue); teachers and head teachers (what monitors do, support available, training, who a typical monitor is); members of school management and parents’ committees; and partner organisations and staff of monitored projects (how it felt to be monitored, what they do when a student reports a problem, what they would change).

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This learning report was produced by and for the Centre de Recherche sur l’Anti-Corruption. Data were analysed by independent consultants. Original edition in English, February 2022.