Website Madhi Foundation

You will be participating in a dynamic team with pan-project visibility and oversight; working to communicate insights and outcomes from pilot projects, mission delivery conducted by Madhi or one of Madhi’s partners. The reports and publications that CERI puts out will contribute to the growing body of knowledge on how to improve educational outcomes for the last-mile child! We need someone with a thirst for learning, and an unwavering belief that evidence based research along with strong communication is an indispensable need to solve the most complex social issues!

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. Madhi’s programmes in Tamil Nadu are consolidated under a single umbrella called Project: TN Soars, comprising 3 critical projects: 1. Ennum Ezhuthum (The Tamil Nadu state Foundational Learning Mission), 2. TechForEdSystems and 3. Tamil Nadu STEAM Model Schools.

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.

Project MALA: Project MALA aims to create high-tech, low-tech and no-tech tools which can support child-educators (parents, teachers, volunteers) to build the neuro-linguistic exposure that children require to acquire language proficiency through oracy. Children in rural areas or from low income households have minimal exposure to the English language- particularly oracy. They find the existing english language learning tools inadequate to build fluency in spoken English and also have difficulty in reading to learn from English sources. Project MALA aims to leverage technology and contextually built learning resources to solve this problem.

Tamil Nadu STEAM Model Schools: To ensure holistic growth of children from underserved communities and to empower them with the skills to work toward their dreams, the Department of School Education has embarked on an ambitious project of setting up ‘Tamil Nadu Model Schools’ that will serve children from the most marginalized backgrounds and equip them with skills and knowledge such that their disadvantages get mitigated and no longer impede their success in academics, work and life. Madhi has joined the Department to assist in the setting up of these 38 Model Schools, each exemplifying the principles of equity and inclusion in letter and spirit, enabling every student, irrespective of their background, to receive equal opportunities to aspire and achieve their goals.

Your team (Research and Innovation)

The Research and Innovation Team comprises: Centre for Education Research in India (CERI) & Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL) sub verticals. This team is a multifaceted group; comprising of data scientists, research specialists and programme managers; all of whom prize dynamism and versatility in their approach to work. Each sub-vertical works closely with all the Project teams at Madhi to ensure that Madhi’s deep work in Tamil Nadu can add value to the ecosystem at large, whether through effectively scaling successful projects or by producing high quality research outputs. The CERI team is focused on producing high quality research outputs based on insights from Madhi’s projects and from the ecosystem at large, particularly where contextualisation of learning is necessary for implementation within the Indian ecosystem. The MEL team is focused on codifying insights from the implementation of all projects implemented by Madhi, such that they can be effectively replicated at scale and/or in other contexts in India while enabling the team to constantly learn from the evidence gathered and improve the programme model. 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.

About the role

The challenges you will help solve in this role:

Lack of a structured body of knowledge on what works and what doesn’t work to improve last mile educational outcomes for children; in particular- by contextualising findings to the Indian context
Qualitative and quantitative field data seldom interact with each other and even when they do, it is hard for a common person to interpret and understand this data to learn from the evidence
Support project verticals and sub-verticals to find relevant pieces of global research which meet their project objectives.

The job description:

Below is an indicative set of responsibilities you will be required to lead as part of your role. 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:

Assist in developing and updating MEL standard operating procedures at Madhi
Collaborate with project teams to develop MEL frameworks (including ToC, Logframes etc.) for different projects
Support project team members in executing MEL framework in the field (including tool creation, data collection workshops etc.)
Along with Senior Manager, Research and Innovation, develop a roadmap for different MEL reports and dissemination
Maintaining digital data collection, MEL dashboards etc.
Support respective team members to organize qualitative data collection activities both internally and externally (ie- FGDs, discussion forums etc)
Along with Senior Manager, Research and Innovation, develop a research agenda that includes both intervention-outcome oriented research as well as larger education-in-India oriented research.

You will thrive in this role if you:

Can conceptualise and report insights from pilot research studies, designed at strengthening existing systems and practices.
Have prior experience of creating strategic, data-driven policy advocacy based on data analysis from field inputs.
Are comfortable dealing with both quantitative and qualitative data.
Are highly planned, organised, methodical, meticulous and detail oriented.
Can creatively communicate insights to different audiences.
Have prior experience in interpreting tabulated/ visualised data sets and in creating comprehensive reports explaining field input data.
Thrive in a deadline oriented environment in creating collaterals for external stakeholders.
Have excellent stakeholder management skills, especially within a public sector setting.
Can storytell well, both verbally, in writing and visually; have proficiency in oral communication in Tamil.

Prerequisites include:

At least 4 years of experience in programme management or research role
A Masters degree in Social Work, Development Communication. In lieu of a Masters, we will also consider more years of relevant experience.
Experience in the education/development sector would be an asset.
Experience in dealing with analysis of quantitative data and quantitative is a must
Knowledge of and experience with SPSS or similar software dealing with statistics in the social sciences
Excellent knowledge of MS Office, G Suite, Digital Survey Tools and Data Visualization Tools
Experience in reporting research results to various stakeholders
Good written communication in English

This role will report to: Senior Manager, Research & Innovation
Location: Chennai, Tamil Nadu
Remuneration: Rs 6,00,000 – 10,00,000 Lakhs p.a
Please note: You will be expected to bring your own laptop, with updated software (MS Office 2016)

For more information, please write to: apply@madhifoundation.org

To apply for this job please visit forms.gle.