From 2 to 15 November 2022, 9 two-day training workshops on School Integrity Building approach were organized for three hundred students, including 180 from South Kivu and 120 from Kinshasa.

These workshops, organized as part of the “Students Act for Accountability and Quality in Education in the DRC” project funded by the Global Partnership for Education, aim to build the capacities of students to promote accountability and the quality of education in schools that have been weakened in recent years by lack of ethics, poor infrastructures, poor delivery of educational services, insufficient resources, and corruption in the supply chain.

A total of 300 students were trained in the monitoring process, data collection using our techtool EduCheck* and on advocacy with school officials.

*EduCheck is a web and mobile application developed by CERC that helps students produce reliable, real-time data that can be used by the Ministry of Education to shape policies and resource allocation within schools. The data collected provides assurance that the school materials provided by the Ministry of Education have been distributed and whether they are also accessible and used by teachers and students. With data, problems related to the implementation of an education policy can be corrected in real-time, failures adjusted, and results measured.

Starting in January 2023, trained students will use “EduCheck” to monitor elements such as water and sanitation in the school, the attendance and behavior of teachers and students, and the lack of basic equipment such as desks, books, and teaching materials.

We are convinced that students have the potential to face the most pressing challenges in their schools; by offering them training and resources, we can freely express their enthusiasm, as well as their desire to participate in building schools that are more responsible, open, inclusive, and that meet their needs, priorities and expectations…