Project Manager Senior Project Manager - Foundational Learning SPMU

Project: State Program Management Unit (SPMU)

Role: Project Manager/Senior Project Manager

Required work experience: 2 to 4 years (for PM) and 4 to 6 years (SPM) of relevant work experience

Location: Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh

About Central Square Foundation (CSF)

Founded in 2012, Central Square Foundation is a non-profit philanthropic foundation working with the vision of ensuring quality school education for all children in India. CSF has a mission focus on ensuring high-quality foundational learning for all children in India. To achieve this, we partner with individuals and social impact organizations to bring innovative solutions in education to build the capacity of the government to drive systemic impact. To know more about us and our work, visit www.centralsquarefoundation.org.

About The State Project Management Unit (SPMU)

Central Square Foundation has developed a comprehensive playbook to support state governments in undertaking large-scale reform initiatives. This playbook involves close collaboration with the State Project Directors offices and the development of a 5 to 7-year roadmap to fundamentally transform critical workstreams. You can find more information on this initiative by following the link provided here - Critical Workstreams for FLN.

We have been working closely with the education departments of Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, and Haryana since 2019. A version of our initial playbook in these states has also been adopted by the Ministry of Education when they launched the NIPUN Bharat mission. As of March 2023, we have achieved the following in all three states:

• Improved all FLN materials used in all classrooms in all three states. Our efforts have introduced structured pedagogy-based teachers guides, student workbooks, and additional FLN materials such as big books, reading charts, and math kits in all classrooms. This was achieved by working closely with state SCERTs and receiving academic design support from our partners in the coalition.
• Introduced an assessment-informed instruction in all three states. This involves setting up formative and summative assessments with high-quality assessment items and a tracking mechanism to support teachers.
• Established comprehensive continuous teacher training programs in all three states. This includes 5-7 days of face-to-face training and approximately 20-30 hours of digital training for all FLN teachers in the state.
• Established a cadre of cluster-level mentors to visit schools monthly and provide instructional support to teachers and headmasters through classroom observations and spot tests. This support is facilitated using apps in all three states, which also enables the collection of valuable data to understand implementation across all schools.
• Developed a comprehensive foundational learning monitoring system in the three states. This involves multiple apps used by mentors, teachers, and other administrators like BEO and DIETs, as well as a dashboard where all critical KPIs are visualized for the entire state.
• Set up a monthly review structure where the state and districts review progress in FLN using the dashboard and take actions based on the data available from all classrooms. This review structure has been established in all three states.
• Supported all three states in conducting regular sample annual endline student FLN achievement surveys, coupled with monthly dipstick sample surveys. The survey results are used to set up district-level FLN goals and communicate them across the entire state delivery channels to drive accountability.
  
  
  

For the next three years, Central Square Foundation is committed to raising resources and operating in these states with a focus on stabilizing the aforementioned inputs and then guiding all districts towards a situation where the majority of students achieve FLN competence by the time they cross grade 3. This would involve the following initiatives:

• Strengthening the project management units in each state and adopting districts to drive implementations through district project management units established by the government
• Working closely with the Mission Director to continuously iterate the design of all academic inputs based on insights from the field. Additionally, influencing the state leadership to prevent any rollback of design changes already achieved
• Collaborating with the Mission Director to improve the quality of data collected by mentors and other stakeholders regarding classroom observations and student assessments from all districts
• Supporting all districts in understanding their progress with respect to the mission implementation and helping them develop action plans to achieve the missions goals
• Working closely with the State Mission Director to strengthen the district PMU by running FLN fellowships or placing CSF teams in select districts
  
  
  

Key responsibilities of a Project Manager:

CSF is recruiting for the position of Project Manager to support the state FLN team in developing and rolling out a holistic foundational learning programme. This role will cater specifically to academic workstreams such as Teaching Learning Materials, Teacher (and Academic Cadre) Capacity Building, Mentoring Support to Teachers, Monitoring, Cascaded Reviews, Assessments and Communications. This role will require day-to-day interaction and working with government officials in the state government which includes:

Develop work products, documents, and outputs related to academic workstreams in consultation with the internal CSF teams and academic partners

• Teaching-Learning Materials and Instructional Design: Support the state in designing quality curricular and instructional materials for the state such as academic calendar, learning outcome framework, teacher guides, lesson plans, student worksheets
• Assessments: Support the state in developing an assessment framework for early grades, including system assessment and school-based assessment (formative and summative assessments)
• Teacher Professional Development: Provide support to the state for conducting training needs assessment, situational analysis, design of high-quality teacher training modules, trainer capacity building, training monitoring, and feedback
• Mentoring: Design and integrate an on-site support program for teachers informed by evidence collected through the classroom observation process
• Support the PMU for continuous program monitoring and course correction during the implementation of academic workstreams
• Knowledge management and documentation of the implementation of work
  
  
  

Skills and Qualifications:

• Bachelors degree from a reputed university is required; a Masters degree preferred in education, development studies, and social science
• 2 to 6 years (for Project Manager) of post-qualification work experience, preferably in the education sector
• Strong project management skills with proven program implementation experience
• Excellent writing and oral communication skills with proficiency and fluency in English and Hindi both
• Excellent project delivery skills, including the ability to create project plans, drive execution, manage multiple projects at a time, and maturity to influence multiple internal and external stakeholders
• Prior hands-on experience in the Indian education sector and with government stakeholders
• Strong analytical skills backed by a pragmatic bent of mind, able to drive actionable insights from data.
• Strong growth and learning mindset
  
  
  

Compensation

Remuneration will be competitive with Indian philanthropy pay scales and will depend upon the candidates experience levels.

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