Skills-Based Education Strategist (Director-level)

at Educate!
Location Nairobi, Kenya
Date Posted November 3, 2021
Category Administration
Job Type Full-time
Currency KES

Description

We have already partnered with governments in Rwanda and Kenya to support skills-based curriculum reforms through our education system solutions, and results from a rigorous impact evaluation have shown that our cost-effective solutions create a real impact on youth through national education systems. The Strategist will work closely with Chief Strategy and Innovation Officer, government engagement teams, and our programs teams in Kenya and Rwanda to continue developing program models that support long-term changes to education systems and meaningful, sustainable curriculum reforms.

The right person for this role will:

  • Have experience in education, either as an education expert or through developing products in the education sector.
  • Make data- or evidence-based decisions. Experience running experiments, product development processes, or human-centered design processes is a plus.

Be motivated to work with government education systems to create a broad and sustainable impact on youth through those systems.

About Educate!

Educate! prepares youth in Africa with the skills to succeed in today's economy. We tackle youth unemployment by partnering with youth, schools, and governments to design and deliver solutions that equip young people in Africa with the skills to attain further education, overcome gender inequities, start businesses, get jobs, and drive development in their communities. Our goal is to design skills-based education and employment solutions which impact youth life outcomes sustainably and at scale.

In 2019, we partnered with the governments of Uganda, Rwanda, and Kenya and measurably impacted over 46,000 youth in and out of schools while reaching 470,000 learners more broadly, making us the biggest youth skills providers in East Africa. Amidst the coronavirus pandemic, we've pivoted to create and deploy a distance learning model based on our proven in-school experience and reached over 100,000 students by October 2020. Read here to learn more about Educate!'s distance learning model.

Two rigorous external evaluations of our flagship in-school model, including a randomized controlled trial, found that towards the end of secondary school, participants of our program earn nearly double the income of their peers. A follow-up RCT found that four years later, youth achieve strong and lasting shifts in skills, coupled with significant improvements in education and gender equity-related outcomes, especially young women. Our graduates change their lives and their communities, such as Daniel who opened a rural health clinic in his community employing two people and conducting about 350 checkups per month.

Educate! supports governments with integrating skills-based curriculum nationally. This includes partnering with Uganda's government to integrate curriculum and a Student Business Club structure into Uganda's entrepreneurship course nationally and serving as a technical advisor to both Rwanda and Kenya on national education reforms.

Educate! is a non-profit social enterprise with over 160 staff and 300 volunteer youth mentors. We have been backed by top foundations such as MasterCard, Big Bang Philanthropy, Echoing Green, Ashoka and Global Innovation Fund. Educate! won a 2018 Klaus J. Jacobs Prize (and was featured in a video), a 2015 WISE Award, and was highlighted by Bill Gates, in the World Bank's S4YE's Impact Portfolio, an Al Jazeera documentary, Forbes 30 under 30, and The Brookings Institution as one of 14 case studies in their global scaling education learning initiative. Educate! was also selected by the UN's Generation Unlimited as 1 of 20 innovative youth solutions and by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation as a Goalkeepers Accelerator.

Educate!'s long-term vision is to design solutions that measurably impact millions of youth across Africa each year.

Performance Objectives

Strategist Overall Responsibilities (RW)

  • Ensure relevant, engaging programming and assessments are designed through a user-centered process
  • Manage product design from ideation to scalability phase. This includes supporting budgeting, planning, coordination, development and quality assurance of various programs and activities
  • Ensure designers utilize instructional design concepts and principles to create interactive and engaging course content

Education Systems Strategist (RW)

  • Responsible for planning, reviewing, and prioritizing our mid and long term goals for serving all Rwanda Education Systems products
  • Set validation, efficiency, and scale strategy in line with organization objectives and revenue strategy.
  • Oversee the evaluation and ensure strategy responds to impact data.
  • Identify and propose systems/structures for experimentation to create efficient delivery mechanisms.
  • Oversee early-stage program implementation and ensure quality

Community Service Learning Policy Development (KE)

  • Oversee development of draft curriculum and assessment designs as part of Educate!'s role as technical advisor to KICD and KNEC
  • Oversee development of pilot programs with government to ensure pilots are in line with Educate!'s product development process and government's standards for research and learning
  • Oversee strategic management of key risks facing the strategy
  • Represent Educate! in technical workshops with government teams

Reform Facilitation (RW & KE)

  • Develop technical slide decks for government partners to increase their capacity to design policy solutions for curriculum and assessment CBC reforms
  • Develop strategic frameworks to help government technical teams make impact-driven decisions
  • Work with Educate! advocacy teams and government technical teams to develop learning agendas that inform government's assessment of barriers to impact regarding their curriculum and assessment policies
  • Review draft research reports to ensure recommendations are in line with policies that will create impact on youth

Qualifications And Profile

  • Dynamic experience highly preferred, with demonstrated ability to operate well in complex and fast-changing environments
  • 8+ years work experience, with 5+ years of management and/or leadership experience
  • Experience working with governments in East Africa preferred
  • Understanding of education system and education reform theory preferred
  • Experience managing medium to large size teams and balancing multiple priorities
  • Passion for Educate!'s mission is a must, but past work in education or youth development is not required. We value diverse perspectives and encourage applications from people with a variety of backgrounds.
  • Fits our Five Cultural Tenets (see What is Educate! About? below); Learn more by looking at Educate!'s culture deck here

Terms

  • Compensation will be competitive and commensurate with experience
  • Benefits include medical insurance
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