Job Opportunity for Senior Project Lead (Academic) at Central Square Foundation in New Delhi

Reports to: Project Director, State FLN Projects

Reporting roles: 1-2 Project Managers/Consultants

Position Summary:

The National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 clearly prioritises Foundation Literacy and Numeracy (FLN) among all other interventions and puts a rather ambitious target of ‘ensuring that all learners in Grade 3 achieve FLN by 2025’. This is a great opportunity (with policy, planning, funding and implementation capacity available) to make this happen for lakhs of children in our schools who do not possess basic gateway skills for literacy, numeracy by the time they pass Grade 3 (and primary school) and get left behind.

CSF is working with 12 state governments to help them design and launch their contextualised versions of the National Foundation Literacy and Numeracy (FLN) Mission. The State FLN Projects team works in five of them namely, Assam, Bihar, Punjab, Odisha, Telangana by deploying a Project Management Unit (PMU) led by a State Team Leader and supported by 4 Project Consultants. In addition, there is a central team led by the Project Director which supports the state teams in their work and handles other responsibilities.

The teams work on supporting the state education system (Education Department, Samagra Shiksha (SmSA) office, State Council of Education Research and Training (SCERT)) on academic and programmatic workstreams. This position is a part of the Central Team reporting into the Project Director. There will be two such positions – one responsible for supporting the academic work streams such as Teaching Learning Materials, Teacher (and Academic Cadre) Capacity Building, Assessments and Classroom observations and the other supporting the programmatic work streams such as Monitoring, Planning, Data and Communication. This position is for a Project Lead/Senior Project Lead for the academic workstreams.

Key responsibilities include:

Add value to design and structuring of FLN workstreams (programmatic) in the states -70 %

• In consultation with the State Team Leaders, provide inputs and support to develop, refine and contextualize CSF’s POV on critical FLN work streams on Teaching Learning Materials, Teacher (and Academic Cadre) Capacity Building, Assessments and Classroom observations
• Critically review work-products, documents and outputs of state teams in consultation with the State Team Leaders and Director
• Work closely with issue/expert teams at CSF on Classroom Instruction & Practice (CIP), Assessments etc. to contextualize the same for states; support state teams in taking the thinking into states and iterate basis feedback and need
• Knowledge management and documentation of implementation of work in states for cross-learning and sharing among state teams
• Support Project Director in reviews and follow-up with state teams

Provide additional capacity to State Teams for implementation – 20%

• Provide on-ground support for capacity building activities in state including workshops, learning modules/capsules for different stakeholders as per need
• Support state and central team for continuous programme monitoring and course-correction during implementation

Reporting and liasoning with donor(s), partners and internal – 10%

• Lead donor(s) engagement on the project – support in reporting, coordination and compliance for existing donors; supporting in new donor engagement (as per need)
• Facilitate identification and alignment with all other technical partners, vendors and consultants that the project may need and support in effective onboarding
• Support Project Director in internal reporting to CSF leadership and board

Required Qualifications, Skills and Abilities:

• Master’s or equivalent degree in education, development studies and social sciences from a reputed institution
• 9+ years of highly relevant work experience of providing academic support and/or program management in school education sector
• Ability to synthesize technical insights from different points of view into actionable plans and drive alignment of multiple team members on the plans
• Strong technical skills in development/review of teaching-learning materials, training, classroom observations, assessments etc.
• Strong project management/delivery skills, including ability to create/review project plans, drive execution, manage multiple projects at a time and maturity to influence multiple internal and external stakeholders
• Attention to detail and being able to review and improve the quality of documents/products significantly
• Good facilitation skills with people across experience levels and ability to manage by influence
• Strong written and oral communication skills