Integrity Clubs in secondary schools of Kinshasa and South Kivu, where students monitor education services and work with education officials and parliamentarians for accountable, quality education.
Translated from the original French edition.
Secondary schools in which all students can – and do – successfully demand accountability from the education institutions they rely on.
received in 2022 and 2023; with the US$751 Year Zero balance, US$430,928 spent on the project
Integrity Clubs in South Kivu and Kinshasa (2022)
students aged 14–19 trained to monitor education services
teachers (278) and school principals (138) trained
Secondary schools in which all students can – and do – successfully demand accountability from the education institutions they rely on.
Funded by the Global Partnership for Education through Education Out Loud (Operational Component 2) with Oxfam IBIS, Students Acting for Accountability and Quality of Education ran for 30 months, from January 2022 to June 2024, in 6 municipalities of South Kivu and 6 municipalities of Kinshasa. It supported the delivery of the DRC Education and Training Sector Strategy 2016–2025, so that students, especially girls, receive accountable, inclusive and equitable quality education services.
Students were trained as community integrity monitors in Integrity Clubs. They monitored school infrastructure and the delivery of education services and shared their findings on CERC’s online platform, EduCheck. The problems they identified were discussed and solved in Education Clusters, where parents, students, teachers and authorities work together; the data then fed advocacy with education authorities and parliamentarians.
In 2021, Year Zero allowed CERC to gather evidence with students, teachers, parents, civil society and education officials, to build its team’s skills and to write the project with them.
Year Zero prepared the Students Acting for Accountability and Quality of Education project. CERC received the Year Zero funds in mid-June 2021, about three months after the period began, and adjusted its work plan; because of Covid-19, workshops were limited to 20 participants, so more of them were held. The full proposal process ended on 21 January 2022.
CERC consulted 534 students (271 boys and 263 girls), 39 principals and 50 teachers, 21 parents’ committees, 19 representatives of 8 civil society organisations working in education, and 12 senior education officials. It used mixed methods: participative workshops on what motivates young people to act, formal meetings with the Provincial Directorates and Ministries of Education of South Kivu and Kinshasa and the National Ministry of Education, and 16 key informant interviews. Evidence was collected over 40 days, and analysed and written up in three weeks; US$7,540 was spent on it, from the stakeholder analysis and data collection to the theory of change, the GESI strategy and the reports.
The study of the Integrity Club model showed that:
In July 2021, four consultative workshops brought together organisations working in education and Ministry of Education officials to discuss the challenges of transparency and accountability in the sector and how to overcome them. The civil society side included the national association of parents of students, the parents’ associations of Catholic and Protestant schools, three teachers’ unions, the African Zone League for the Defence of Children and Students’ Rights and the National Coalition for Education for All; 9 participants from 6 faith-based education coordinations also took part. With 12 senior officials of the Ministry of Education, the workshop focused on bringing Integrity Clubs into every secondary school and the Integrity Education Handbook into the national curriculum.
Building on these results, the whole programme team defined the project’s context, objectives, outcomes and outputs, its theory of change and overall strategy, the monitoring framework and the budget, and wrote the proposal. The Year Zero produced a gender equality and social inclusion (GESI) strategy, a KAP baseline survey, the theory of change and a research report with recommendations for integrity education and student-led monitoring in secondary schools.
CERC rated the process followed during Year Zero as satisfactory, and the final products – proposal, logical framework, budget and monitoring framework – and the learning outputs as highly satisfactory.
In 2022, CERC established 204 Integrity Clubs in South Kivu and Kinshasa, empowering 2,250 students aged 14–19 to monitor education services in their schools. Student-led advocacy resolved 33% of the problems identified.
CERC trained 138 school principals and 278 teachers from 150 secondary schools in South Kivu and Kinshasa in integrity building and anti-corruption measures in the school system.
CERC brought together 96 participants in Bukavu and Kinshasa – senior education officials, 3 members of parliament, journalists, teachers’ union representatives and school founders – to evaluate its anti-corruption approach in the education sector. The workshop led to a memorandum of understanding, endorsed by the Ministry of Primary, Secondary and Technical Education through the Provincial Directorate of Education of South Kivu 1, to include Integrity Clubs in every secondary school in South Kivu and Kinshasa.
CERC conducted a knowledge, attitudes and practices (KAP) survey of its Integrity Club model with 2,250 students in 150 schools, to identify effective delivery models and the key stakeholders. Young people recognised the importance of integrity and were motivated to improve their schools; where focal teachers and headteachers were supportive, the climate for monitoring was positive; families who attended awareness sessions were more likely to support monitoring.
With the African Parliamentarians’ Network Against Corruption (APNAC DRC), CERC drafted two bills to include Integrity Clubs and integrity education in the DRC’s education system.
Two multi-stakeholder consultation workshops in Kinshasa and Bukavu brought together 97 policymakers to review policies, programmes and curricula on integrity and anti-corruption in secondary schools. Government officials, educators and NGOs contributed to strategies against corruption and to a culture of integrity in schools.
CERC signed a memorandum of understanding with APNAC DRC to support integrity reforms in the public sector, with a programme to reform the education sector.
Drafted with members of parliament, education specialists and civil society, CERC’s bill provides for Integrity Clubs – structures within schools, made up of elected students who promote integrity and transparency – and an integrity education course in the regular curriculum of all secondary schools. In April 2024, CERC and APNAC DRC took the bill to the National Assembly and called on the public and civil society to support it.
Integrity Club members used EduCheck to report school problems and the fixes they obtained, giving education officials reliable, real-time data from each school.
CERC received US$361,361 for the project in 2022 – two transfers to its account at the Trust Merchant Bank (TMB) – and US$68,816 in January 2023: US$430,177 in all. With the US$751 in cash at the start of the project, brought forward from the Year Zero, the project had US$430,928, which it spent: US$273,341 in 2022 (audited) and US$157,587 in 2023 (not audited). The project accounts are kept in US dollars, on a cash basis.
| Funds received | US$ |
|---|---|
| Transfer of 17 March 2022 | 258,115 |
| Transfer of 21 October 2022 | 103,246 |
| Received in 2022 | 361,361 |
| Instalment of January 2023 | 68,816 |
| Received in 2023 | 68,816 |
| Total funds received, 2022–2023 | 430,177 |
| Year Zero balance brought forward (cash at the start of the project, 1 March 2022) | 751 |
| Total project resources, 2022–2023 | 430,928 |
| Heading | US$ |
|---|---|
| Objective 1 – education officials, civil society and parliamentarians | 10,032 |
| Objective 2 – 2,250 students as agents of change | 124,956 |
| Objective 3 – 150 schools and Integrity Clubs | 24,282 |
| Objective 4 – student advocacy and campaigns | 1,689 |
| Direct costs | 92,849 |
| Administrative costs | 19,534 |
| Total expenditure 2022 (audited) | 273,341 |
Totals as in the audit report. At 31 December 2022, the theoretical cash balance was US$88,771, carried forward to 2023.
| Budget line | US$ |
|---|---|
| Category 1 – the four project objectives | 101,836.96 |
| – objective 1: high-level advocacy and policy engagement | 5,836.22 |
| – objective 2: Integrity Clubs and monitoring | 72,101.53 |
| – objective 3: training of teachers and principals, Education Clusters | 15,995.72 |
| – objective 4: student-led advocacy and campaigns | 7,903.49 |
| Category 2 – direct project support | 39,216.41 |
| Category 3 – administration, audit and bank charges | 16,533.63 |
| Total expenditure 2023 (unaudited) | 157,587.00 |
2023 resources: the balance of US$88,771 carried forward from 2022 and the instalment of US$68,816 received in January 2023.
| Direct project support | Received US$ | Spent US$ |
|---|---|---|
| Capacity building | 8,300.00 | 8,200.00 |
| Evidence collection, analysis and presentation | 7,575.00 | 7,540.00 |
| Development of tools and strategies | 1,800.00 | 1,800.00 |
| Proposal development | 5,715.00 | 5,420.00 |
| Bank charges | 596.00 | 349.86 |
| Total | 23,986.00 | 23,309.86 |
Year Zero finance report to Oxfam IBIS, June–December 2021 (not audited): a balance of US$676.14. The 2021 audit of CERC’s accounts records US$23,239.50 of expenditure – US$70.36 less, all in bank charges (US$279.50 instead of US$349.86) – and a balance of US$746.50 owed to GPE/Oxfam IBIS. CERC’s ledger took over US$746.41 and the bank account also held US$5.06 of CERC’s own funds kept for fees: the US$751 in cash at the start of the project in the 2022 audit, which works in whole dollars.
The 2022 statement of expenditure and income was audited by DWAC (Divine Wisdom for Assisting and Consulting), Kinshasa, in accordance with International Standards on Auditing; the report, signed by Mac NGUBI, Chartered Accountant, is dated 7 April 2023. The auditor expressed a qualified (“except for”) opinion, based on unforeseen expenses of US$5,158 incurred without Oxfam IBIS’s formal approval, an unjustified difference of US$2,517 on administrative staff costs, insufficient evidence for accommodation costs of US$3,800, and unjustified cash advances of US$7,120 at 31 December 2022.
CERC thanks the Global Partnership for Education and Oxfam IBIS through Education Out Loud, the education authorities of South Kivu and Kinshasa, the African Parliamentarians’ Network Against Corruption (APNAC DRC), and the students, teachers, parents and principals of the Integrity Clubs.
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