Job Opportunity for Project Manager, Academic Capacity Building at Central Square Foundation in UP

Team: Classroom Instruction and Practice (CIP)

Role: Project Manager, Academic Capacity Building

Required work experience: 2-4 years of relevant experience

Location: TBD (A district in Uttar Pradesh; candidate expected to travel within UP and the district on need basis)

About Central Square Foundation (CSF)

Founded in 2012, Central Square Foundation is a non-profit philanthropic foundation working with the vision of ensuring quality school education for all children in India. CSF has a mission focus on ensuring high-quality foundational learning for all children in India. To achieve this, we partner with individuals and social impact organizations to bring innovative solutions in education to build the capacity of the government to drive systemic impact. To know more about us and our work, visit www.centralsquarefoundation.org.

About the Classroom Instruction and Practice team

CSF has adopted a system reform approach where we partner with State governments to design and scale high-quality foundational learning programs. Our focus is on improving the existing state programs and to this end, the CIP team works on raising the quality of tools, training, and support available for teachers and academic support personnel implementing foundational learning in the classroom. We do this by collaborating with our program partners in states in improving their programs, curating and designing research-backed exemplar public goods, and generating evidence on different aspects in early learning through action research.

About the FLN District Project Management Unit (DPMU) Project

The FLN District Project Management Unit (DPMU) Project aims to drive deeper implementation of the NIPUN Bharat Mission at the district-level. The design of the project involves implementing key academic inputs in the context of larger governance reforms in the district. The project seeks to develop a chain of systemic reform from the district to classroom levels for improved FLN delivery leading to improved student learning outcomes. 

Position Summary

The Project Manager will lead the academic capacity building of district, block and cluster level officials. The key responsibilities are as follows:

Key responsibilities:

• Conducting trainings for State Resource Group (SRG) and Academic Resource Persons (ARP) cadres for building their academic capacity
• Leading action research projects end to end by defining objectives and sharpening the insight. 
• Conducting trainings for Block Project Management Unit (BPMU) and monitoring their progress
• Conducting dipsticks at the classroom level for spot-checking progress for measuring district/block’s performance with respect to achievement of student learning outcomes.
• Building and maintaining relationships with relevant district and block-level officials including but not limited to Basic Shiksha Adhikari, Block Education Officers and DIET Principal, SRG and ARP’s.
• Providing academic oversight for achieving key deliverables outlined in key inputs of the project.

Skills and Qualifications:

• Strong academic background in education with understanding of Foundational Literacy and Numeracy (FLN) acquisition approaches with prior experience in curriculum design and development. Master’s degree in education, public/social policy, child development or related fields is preferred.
• Demonstrated experience in continuous capacity building of academic cadres at district and block levels.
• Excellent people and project delivery skills, including the ability to drive execution, manage multiple projects at a time, and maturity to influence multiple internal and external stakeholders.
• Prior hands-on experience in the Indian education sector is preferred.
• Trained in quantitative and qualitative research methods, with ability to understand rigorous research and explain it to non-technical audiences in a simple yet accurate way.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills both in English and Hindi. 

Compensation

Remuneration will be competitive with Indian philanthropy pay scales and will depend upon the candidate’s experience levels.