Job Opportunity for Project Lead-Private Schools at CSF in Delhi

Position: Project Lead, Private Governance (Full Time)

Role: Project Management/ Stakeholder management

Experience Range: 5-7 years

About Central Square Foundation:

Founded in 2012, Central Square Foundation (CSF) is a non-profit philanthropic foundation working on the vision of ensuring quality school education for all children in India. We are driven by our mission to transform the school education system with a focus on improving the learning outcomes of children, especially from low-income communities. 

About the team:

Private schools form an essential part of the Indian education landscape – approximately a third of all children study in private unaided schools, and over 16 states have more than 50% of students enrolled in private schools. The majority of these are ‘budget or affordable private schools, charging anywhere between ₹150 – 1,500 per child, per month. However, student achievement in these schools leaves much to be desired as the learning outcomes of students in private schools are only marginally better than those enrolled in government schools. 

Central Square Foundation is working to address key challenges in this sector through piloting evidence-based solutions and helping governments in systemic reforms. Our work includes (i) promoting the use of learning data to shape parent demand, (ii) researching on private schools’ contribution, and (iii) building knowledge and awareness around pragmatic regulations focusing on learning outcomes improvement in private schools.

The foremost of this team’s goals is to help the states in measuring the learning outcomes in the classrooms by creating systems so that robust and reliable data is tracked,  analysed, and reported in a manner so as to drive higher accountability for school performance on achieving the learning outcomes.

NEP 2020, in its chapter 4.40, proposes the school examination in Grades 3,5,8 to be conducted by an appropriate authority for the developmental purposes of the school education system. Furthermore, this assessment is to test relevant higher-order skills and application of knowledge in real-life situations, rather than rote memorisation.

Central Square Foundation’s Private Governance team, through its programs in the states, is helping the state governments in

• conducting Competency-based Census Assessments (CCA) at the key stages of grades 3,5,8 in both public and private schools
• Measure learning outcomes in these schools with the help of robust and reliable data captured by conducting these assessments with high quality
• Provision the information on learning outcomes schoolwise publicly in order to inform their choice of school and create demand for quality

About the role:

This role is to ensure the objectives are met as we propose and support various states in their Competency-based Census Assessments (CCA) initiatives. Major work streams include: –

1. Project design and implementation: working with the states and the internal team members to design and manage CCA work and parent dissemination

2. Government stakeholder engagement: representing CSF as a credible partner and working with key stakeholder across the states and their respective Department of Education, SCERT, State NIC, Examination Boards and the directorates.

3. Co-develop strategy for the Private Governance team, state projects and assessment materials: Develop, refine and contextualise CSF’s work on assessments and its dissemination as per the state priorities

This role provides an excellent opportunity to shape CSF’s large scale assessment and governance work, and evangelise a learning quality marker for the schools across India, both public and private. It also affords a great opportunity to work closely with (and learn directly from) senior members in various teams at CSF.

The role will involve partially travelling to the field. Expect around ~30% of the time in other cities/towns/villages/schools/government offices anywhere within India.

Required Qualifications, Skills and Abilities:

• 5 to 7 years of work experience with managerial responsibilities, demonstrating superb project management, project delivery and team leadership
• Ability to lead meetings, deliver presentations, and represent CSF to external audiences, particularly in the government education sector organisations like the SCERT, directorate of education, Samagra Shiksha, Examination Board, department of education etc
• Hands on experience with large scale objective assessments in any industry, preferably in K-12 students
• Experience in managing multi-stakholder projects
• Excellent research skills and the ability to analyse complex qualitative and quantitative data, craft possible solutions, and recommend actions
• Ability to build and maintain positive and collaborative relationships both within and outside the organisation, including with colleagues, schools, regulators, foundations, researchers, grantees, and education product/service providers
• Ability to work independently and proactively, without support staff and with little supervision
• Strong communication and presentation skills
• Strong execution, planning and organisational skills, and an ability to be able to set priorities, plan timelines and meet deadlines

Optional: Masters’s degree or equivalent in relevant fields. Education, Managements, Economics, Social Sciences and Public Policy preferred

Desired Qualities:

• Entrepreneurial spirit and ‘can-do’ attitude
• Operating style suited to working in a small-organisation setting, where teamwork u without without any formal reporting and resourcefulness are highly valued
• Excellent leadership skills, including the ability to manage multiple projects at a time