Project Associate , Officers Professional Development

About LFE

Leadership For Equity (LFE) a non-profit (NGO) – is a systems change and research organization that supports governments with structural and implement reforms to improve the quality of learning at scale. LFE’s fundamental belief is that public education systems are by definition ‘gatekeepers’ of equity, and effective and sensitive public systems will ensure that quality education is provided to every child. LFE has four key pathways to reach its vision of ‘Building effective public systems that refuse to let children down’; namely, Officer Professional Development (OPD), Teacher Professional Development (TPD), Research & Monitoring (RME), and Advisory & Advocacy (AAA). Over the last 3 years, LFE has worked with more than 620 Officers and 670 Teacher mentors to impact 33,200+ teachers and 1.4 million students across Maharashtra. We believe that public systems need to be strengthened to tackle adaptive, deep-rooted social problems. We undertake projects in the field of public education, focusing on institutional and policy level reform, empowering middle management, and developing models for teacher support through technology and mentor communities. LFE is a small yet enterprising team of individuals coming from diverse backgrounds, with varied expertise and life experiences, all of whom add their unique character to shape our collective identity.

About Officer Professional Development

In order to help LFE realize its vision of systemic change to improve public education systems, one of the critical pathways are improving the capacity of middle-management or education officers to ensure that there is a multiplier effect on our impact on education quality, and officers have knowledge, mindsets, and skills to lead programs in their jurisdictions.

In order to ensure this, the State government along with LFE is revitalizing the officer development support across the State by building the capacity of the existing administrative and academic machinery at the State, District, Block level. So far the project entails the following:

● Building capacities of officers across State & District levels through direct training as well as designing online learning experiences for them
● Consistently working alongside officers to handhold them / build capacity through on the job support
● Ensuring clear support structures for Education Department government functionaries across the state.

So far, multiple capacity-building workshops, webinars, and online courses have been conducted and ongoing support for leaders within SCERT and DIETs is underway.

The project has the potential to impact around 1,000 government officers directly, and 6 lakh teachers, and around 65 lakh children studying in government schools across the state indirectly.

Job Description and Responsibilities
We see the Project Associate role at LFE to be a highly aspirational role where the scope to learn about and create impact at a systemic level is immense. The Project Associate will work with the Project Manager to play a critical leadership role in ensuring planning for and execution of the responsibilities listed below. They include but are not limited to:

Planning and Execution (80%)

1. Plan and execute targeted professional development workshops to induct and build capacities of the existing and newly deputed personnel of the SCERT as well as Regional and District Offices
2. Visit district and state-level education offices to provide proximate support to officers in co-designing and co-implementing programs
3. Design and execute other priority tasks aligned to building officer capacity as per demand
4. Create in-depth process reports of all programmatic initiatives, through tracking and collecting project data as required
5. Support the Project Manager in following up administrative tasks at government offices

Advisory and Advocacy (20%)

1. Advise Academic & Administrative officers on educational programs by researching and building one’s own expertise in the latest developments in educational and administrative practices in successful education systems
2. Build & manage relationships across functional teams of SCERT and DIET Heads of Departments, District officers, Divisional Officers, Teachers & other officials to ensure the project execution
3. Support the newly built academic departments by providing ongoing program support to Heads of Departments of SCERT to improve the design, impact, and effectiveness of ongoing departmental initiatives
4. Build and execute monitoring and evaluation processes for departmental training
5. Create detailed policy recommendation reports as required
6. Work with the Program Manager in overall project planning

Requirements

Education & Experience:
● Background in education – teacher education/ policy/ curriculum/training
● The undergraduate degree will be considered, although a Postgraduate in education, social sciences, public policy, or development is preferred
● A minimum of 2 years of work experience in the Education/Social sector
● Sufficient experience as a trainer in a Government/NGO setup
● Demonstrated success in planning and executing development projects

Knowledge, Skills & Capabilities:

● Belief in the potential of the public sector and that the government education system can and will change towards overcoming systemic inequities and ensuring improved learning outcomes for ALL students
● Strong skills around creating effective learning environments for adults
● Ability to create strong project documents & reports, presentations, work with Microsoft Excel, Google Suite, and data sets
● A basic understanding of social equity, development discourse in India
● Excellent interpersonal, communication, presentation, and relationship-building skills with fluency in oral and written Marathi (non-negotiable).
● A preliminary understanding of processes involved in education reform and teacher education
● Being able to take initiative and work in an autonomous, semi-structured environment
● Adaptability to changing responsibilities and resourcefulness to respond to them
● High openness to learning
● Ability to build and sustain relationships with multiple stakeholders & partners across public and private spaces
● Patience and resilience to stick it out in the face of setbacks and uncertainties

Location and Compensation

Location: Pune. The job will involve frequent travel to rural, tribal & urban pockets across Maharashtra.

Compensation: Apart from being a part of a young and dynamic learning team, the individual will receive a healthy compensation at par with the sector benchmark for this position, commensurate with the individual’s prior experience and qualifications.

Contact: Click here to apply. (bit.ly/LFEjobs)