Job Opportunity for Specialist – Content Development & Capacity Building at Madhi in Chennai

About Madhi

Madhi Foundation was established in 2016 as a non-profit organisation committed to the cause of bridging the equity gap in education for children across India. The Foundation draws its inspiration from the Tamil proverb, “Destiny can be conquered with intellect (Madhi)”. Madhi Foundation specifically works to solve the foundational learning crisis in India. Our vision, “Foundational Learning First, so every child is set up for success”, guides our every action and gives our work the purpose and direction it needs.

What we do

Madhi works closely with the Tamil Nadu School Education Department to conceptualise and implement large scale quality improvement programmes in Tamil Nadu’s government schools. Over the course of the next 5 years Madhi will strengthen its existing programmes in the state (as well as undertake new programmes) with the singular aim of ensuring transformative improvement in the quality of school education in Tamil Nadu and beyond.

Ennum Ezhuthum: We are currently also working as the ‘Chief Management Partner’ for Tamil Nadu’s official Foundational Learning Mission, The ‘Ennum Ezhuthum Mission’ – a Rs. 500 Cr Mission of national and regional importance aimed at universalising foundational learning for all children in Tamil Nadu’s 37,000 government schools.

Enjoy English: Enjoy English is a tech-based product-service offering aimed at improving foundational English among children from low-exposure to English contexts. It is one of a kind idea that adopts an oracy first approach to language learning which is different from most programmes that adopt a subject teaching approach to English learning.

Communities Enabling Foundational Learning (CEFL): CEFL aims to equip the parents with the knowledge, skills and tools to understand the quality of foundational education their children receive in public schools and in turn, start advocating for improving the quality of education with stakeholders such as teachers, administrators and local political leaders. We support parents to establish peer groups and networks of parents and community members to support each other towards educating their child and collectively demand for the same.

What is the work culture at Madhi like?

The work culture at Madhi is built both organically and inorganically. We articulate our core values and reinforce them through actions consistently. Team members imbibe Madhi’s values and help grow the culture. Our core values (Mission obsession, Empathy, Resilience, Integrity, Inquiry) form the basis of our actions, policy and interactions. Madhi nurtures a collaborative work culture where individual growth and team success go hand in hand.

Given the nature of our work (our close partnership with the government) we often realise that we work with partners who espouse a work culture that is vastly different from ours which can sometimes create a sense of cultural dissonance. This is not something we are able to change and we expect team members to join us knowing full well that when working with critical partners and stakeholders there would certainly arise a need to adapt and accept the differences and the challenges that come from working in such an environment. We have been fortunate to find team members over the years who have joined us and helped build a strong and purposeful culture and despite our rapid growth we have been able to sustain our culture over time.

Your team (Programme Design & Delivery)

The job vacancy detailed here pertains to Programme Design & Delivery Team. To know more about the work we do, check out our information brochure at bit.ly/MadhiFdn_LearnMore

The Programme Design & Delivery sub-vertical comprises four teams: Content Development, Capacity Building, Enjoy English (Delivery) and CEFL (Delivery). These teams are a multifaceted group; comprising content developers, curricular specialists, professional development architects, trainers, project managers and field staff all of whom prize dynamism and versatility in their approach to work. The sub-vertical works closely with the two other sub-verticals namely “State Reform” and “Data & Technology” counterparts to ensure that we are able to deliver high quality projects to all our stakeholders and learn from our implementation to iteratively improve the effectiveness of the programmes.

The Programme Design & Delivery team core focus is to develop robust programme models, develop high quality materials and training modules to ensure effective implementation of Madhi’s programmes to attain Foundational Learning at scale. All Madhi’s teams work together seamlessly to make magic happen day after day, doing whatever it takes to take us closer to the vision of reimagining school systems to eliminate the foundational learning crisis in India.

The Content Development and Capacity Building team consists of practitioners from teaching, teacher training, content and curriculum development backgrounds. The CD & CB team is in charge of ensuring that all curricular and capacity building materials that Madhi develops and collaborates on, align with our key pillars – Accessibility, Contextualisation, Inclusivity and Learning Outcome-focused. This team also owns the academic and training inputs across all programs and hence delivers high quality error free content and training customised to individual project needs.

About the role:

The Specialist, Content Development and Capacity Building will support the Senior Manager and guide associates in the curriculum and instructional design processes for all projects. This involves co-creating guidelines for all content pieces, including but not limited to worksheets, lesson plans, instructional videos and assessments. These curricular materials for grades 1 to 3 for literacy (English and Tamil) and Math will be benchmarked globally and customised to the local user.

The challenges you will help solve at Madhi

– Addressing the unique challenges that the public education space faces

– Planning and implementing projects applying various permutations and combinations that ultimately address the foundational learning challenges

– Contributing purposefully to the growing body of knowledge on what works and what doesn’t work to improve last mile educational outcomes for children, through the public sector delivery; in particular- by contextualising findings to the Indian context

– We are an outcome-driven organisation and we do not obsess over clocking in and clocking out. As the sub-vertical head, you will be responsible to identify ways in which we can hold your team accountable to a high bar of excellence with a singular focus on outcomes by setting up systems that let us keep our eye on the ball at all times

The Job Description

Below is an indicative set of responsibilities you will be required to lead as part of your role. This is a hybrid role, and based on prior experience and interests, you may be more involved in one of the two core areas – content development and capacity building. We believe that a job description is best created collaboratively where the individual joining the team and the senior leadership team together define the role in greater detail so it reflects your aspirations and ambitions as much as it does the organisation’s needs. A detailed description will be jointly created once the selection process has been completed and you have accepted our offer of employment.

In this role, some of your responsibilities will include:

– Co-designing the overall curriculum development and capacity building strategies and driving effective implementation of the same

– Co-creating frameworks and guidelines for curriculum development as well as capacity building which will anchor the processes adopted

– Creating curricular materials, primarily paper-based and digital content for children and teachers of grades 1 – 3, that align with the finalised frameworks and guidelines

– Creating capacity building materials to develop and evaluate the knowledge, skills and mindsets of key stakeholders crucial to project implementation, and facilitating training spaces as per the needs of the project/organisation

– Ensuring all curricular and capacity building materials meet national and international quality standards through periodic reviews and propose improvements informed by research

– Supporting Associates and Senior Associates sharpen their technical skills through structured feedback mechanisms and on-going professional development

You will thrive in this role if you:

– Have a keen interest in pedagogy and strive to research extensively

– Have a penchant for learning and can break down complex processes for stakeholders to consume easily

– Have impeccable planning and task tracking skills

– Can read and write in Tamil

– Possess a growth mindset and are comfortable seeking solutions for problems that you may not immediately have an understanding of

Prerequisites include:

– An Master degree in Education

– Teaching experience in low-income schools for at least two years

– At least 4 years of relevant work experience in teaching, learning content development and teacher training with a minimum of 1 year in a managerial position

– Experience of having directly managed a team of at least 2 entry-level team members

– Excellent knowledge of MS Word, Excel and PowerPoint and all Google Suite applications

This role will report to: Senior Manager, Training and Capacity Building

Location: Chennai, Tamil Nadu

Please note: You will be expected to bring your own laptop with updated software (MS Office 2016)

Remuneration: INR 8 LPA to INR 10 LPA