Position: Education Specialist

Organization: Quest Alliance 

Location: Ranchi

Apply: https://questalliance.zohorecruit.com/careers

About the Program

The main objective of this program is to make the School a Joyful learning space for building 21st century skills of students to become self-learners. As well as focus is towards whole child development of adolescents.

In partnership with BEPC (Bihar Education Project council) Quest is running Anandshala program across 996 Govt schools of Samastipur District. In April 2018, the program expanded to Deoghar, Jharkhand as part of Dasra Education Collaborative and the programme is being implemented with the support of two local partner NGOs having Quest playing the role of technical support and funding. 

From 2022 Anandshala is expanding its operations in Jharkhand across 24 districts The programme is intervene in both selected residential and nonresidential schools. Anandshala would be supporting implementation of the Socio Emotional Learning curriculum in the residential schools by providing ongoing support to school teachers, principals and through parent engagement. 

The Education Specialist will be part of the state team with a mission to build a State Led Model in the state of Jharkhand by leading the areas of technical assistance to the state, knowledge management and strategic representation and partnership with the Govt. The Education Specialist will be supporting the communication, capacity building under both Anandshala and Sampoorna program across 24 districts of Jharkhand.

The role will also lead efforts to look after donor reporting, content delivery in school and ensure the implementation of curriculum plans for the year. The role has scope to look into the monitoring & evaluation aspect of the program and will be closely supporting the M&E associate. We are looking for an experienced person who has prior experience of having worked in state led scale up models while having a perspective on the content thematic & Monitoring and evaluation. The role of the Education Specialist will be leading the overall content development, review and the capacity building strategy for different stakeholders in collaboration with the training team and central schools team on learning experience. 

Role Description

Programme Strategy and Implementation

• Support State lead to develop programme plans in line with the State and Programme strategies, National Education policy and Jharkhand State priorities. 

• Support to develop quarterly and monthly component wise plans for the teams

• Orientate the team to larger plan and quarterly/ monthly plan

• Support programme teams to develop micro plans for execution

• Support programme teams to ensure implementation of plans based on the stakeholder realities 

• Be open to understand the challenges of the field teams, rework and redesign the implement plan

• Enhance understanding and capacity of internal teams for stakeholder engagement and programme execution

• Support State lead to facilitate learning and reflection amongst team members

• Seeking stakeholder feedback and reflections, make field visits and provide support to programme teams on site for programme execution. 

• Capture and document insights from the field and incorporate them in program review. 

• Compile the insights from the field to check what is working and what is not working in the design, inform the design of the programme to integrate the learnings and reflections.

Government, Donor and Partner engagement

• Plan and prepare for donor meeting and calls in collaboration with State lead

• Participate in internal and external working groups with partners to foster collaboration and larger impact in the State

• Represent the organizations point of view and navigate through key interdependencies with partner organizations 

• Will be responsible for all the donor communication and reporting and will be closely working with the Grant team for timely donor report compiling and sharing

• Share key reflections and learnings from stakeholders and team with partners and donors

• Work closely with the JEPC & DET Officials at state and be part of all the review meetings. 

• Participate and contribute in all meetings and workshops, working groups and task force created by the State.

Content Development & Capacity Building 

• Plan and execute the training and capacity building for the internal team and stakeholders for Jharkhand.

• Work closely with the content & development manager on designing the flow and content for sessions to be conducted both for schools and youth clubs.

• Developing a strategy for building a pool of master trainers both in the state education department as well as at community level who will take the program approach forward. Facilitate their capacity building process.

• Design flow for offline events or virtual events – Kishori mela  career days, Adolescent health day

• Build the processes of collecting feedback and use data to understand content and capacity need

Programme Monitoring - Evaluation and Communication 

• Streamline the communication process for Jharkhand with communication officers and will play a key role for establishing better coordination among different nodes internally. 

• Ensure timely execution of communication related collaterals like case studies, videos and documentation with support of District team and Communications Officers

• Update reporting platforms for the programme in collaboration with State lead.

• Compiling  Annual reports for Jharkhand

• Finalizing the monthly and Quarterly government reports & Newsletters in coordination with the communications team.

• Support in organizing programme reflection and review  meetings with support of the MnE team. 

Requirements

Required Skills and Experience:

• Minimum 5-7 years of work experience, in large scale programme design  & implementation

• Hands-on experience with working  on Adolescents issues 

• Prior experience in content development and implementation

• Prior experience of having worked in state led scale up models 

• Willingness to learn and influence prevalent practices in education ecosystem

• Deep understanding of the National Education Policy and State Curriculum Framework

• Excellent interpersonal, written and verbal communication skills in English and Hindi (preferred)

• Excellent IT skills

• Willingness to travel extensively

• Ability to reflect and learn, enhance capacity of teams, and manage relationships with Government , Media &  partner NGOs

• Ability to work independently as well as collaboratively with other teams