Senior Education Technical Advisor provide leadership, management, and technical assistance for education program design, delivery and management of education portfolio and education related activities. Provide technical leadership, capacity building and short-term technical assistance to field programs

ROLE PURPOSE

The Senior Education Technical Advisor will use an in-depth contextual understanding, technical expertise, and relationship building skills to define and deliver SC strategic ambition for education in Ethiopia. The jobholder will assist the Director in education policy/strategy development; initiation and development of innovative and high quality programs; development and roll out of guidelines and tools meant to enhance quality of education programs. The role supports national advocacy and influencing efforts, while driving strategic partnerships for new business development. It supports the design and implementation of monitoring and evaluation systems to demonstrate impact, while sharing learning across our programs, teams and partners. He/she will lead on sector based researches and assessments in collaboration with MEAL team. The role will work closely with operations colleagues and with partners in Ethiopia CO, building their capacity, ownership and agency of local organizations. This role includes a focus on external representation on priority issues including: early childhood care and development: foundational learning and uninterrupted learning (education in emergencies) to ensure all children have access to education leading to learning and well being outcomes.   In the event of a major humanitarian emergency, the role holder will be expected to work outside the normal role profile and be able to vary working hours accordingly. 

SCOPE OF ROLE

Staff reporting to this post: no direct reports but expected to provide coaching and mentoring support to operational and other technical colleagues and local partners

Budget Responsibilities: None

Role Dimensions: The role is expected to foster relationships with a wide range of internal and external stakeholders including Save the Children members, the Country Office Programme Development & Quality team, advocacy colleagues, Regional Advisors, technical counterparts in other organisations, MOE, national education cluster, donors, academia etc. The role is also expected to engage with internal technical working groups and communities of practices

Primary Sub-technical area: Technically lead new business development and program quality as well as strategy development, covering pre-primary and primary education.

Secondary/ sub-technical area: Staff capacity development, with significant contribution to learning and 

KEY AREAS OF ACCOUNTABILITY:

A.  Technical Leadership:

• Assist the Director in Play a leading role in initiating, development and roll out of education policy, strategies, guidelines and tools within the framework of CO’s strategy direction

• Drive the introduction and implementation of innovative and high impact approaches that can enhance the relevance, effectiveness and quality of education within the changing and varying operating context of the CO (humanitarian, development, conflict etc.). This includes but not limited to SCI’s Common Approaches

•  Lead on evidence and learning activities in the sector including the education community of practice.

• Build capacity of national staff and partners in key technical approaches related to education including on use of digital data collection and analysis 

Lead the technical scoping, planning, and design and proposal writing during new programme development, and ensure that we design and deliver high quality education programmes for children, building on global best practice

• Ensure that gender, disability and resilience considerations are reflected in our programme design and implementation.

• Work with Child Rights Governance colleagues to ensure that a rights based approach is reflected in our programme design and implementation (in line with our  child rights programming approach), with a strong focus on child participation

• Promote an Education Systems Strengthening approach as the overarching framework that supports working in collaboration and partnership with governments and regional bodies, local partners and working towards impact, scale and sustainability

• Provide oversight and guidance to the programme implementation teams to ensure that thematic programme components are technically sound, implementation methods are consistent with national and global strategies, acknowledged good practice (e.g. Save the Children Common Approaches); and are likely to achieve scale, as well as equitable and sustainable results.

• Promote and monitor integrated programming in a way that increases overall impact of education programmes at the country level.

• Work with Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability & Learning (MEAL) teams to carry out gender and power analysis, and conduct quality monitoring against international standards through participatory methodologies that promote gender equality and social justice (including child-friendly and gender sensitive/transformative methodologies).

• Extract and produce high quality education technical briefs, success stories and related materials pertaining to CO’s education programs periodically and ensure the dissemination of the same internally and externally by working together with Head of Evidence and Learning

• Initiate and lead efforts meant to test, develop and scale up new approaches that can help address the educational challenges of children in SCI CO’s operation areas with the support of Head of Evidence and Learning

• Contribute towards the creation of an organisational learning culture that promotes the use of disaggregated data, evidence and analysis (including gender and power analysis) and understands its link to quality and accountable programming;

• Contribute to strengthening the use of equality-focused programme principles and good practice across themes and sectors.

• Undertake field visits to project sites; work with implementation teams to understand impacts, operational challenges, and continuously identify opportunities for learning and improvement

BEHAVIOURS (Values in Practice

Accountability:

• holds self-accountable for making decisions, managing resources efficiently, achieving and role modelling Save the Children values

• Holds their team and partners accountable to deliver on their responsibilities - giving them the freedom to deliver in accordance with the context, providing the necessary development to improve performance and applying appropriate consequences when results are not achieved.

Ambition:

•   Sets ambitious and challenging goals for themselves and their team, takes responsibility for their own personal development and encourages their team to do the same

• Widely shares Save the Children’s vision, and engages and motivates others future orientated, thinks strategically and on a national and global scale.

Collaboration:

• builds and maintains effective relationships, with their team, colleagues, Members and external partners and supporters

• values diversity, sees it as a source of competitive strength

• Approachable, good listener, easy to talk to.

Creativity:

• develops and encourages new and innovative solutions

• Willing to take disciplined risks.

Integrity:

•  honest, encourages openness and transparency; demonstrates highest levels of integration

• The post holder must commit to work in an international agency that promotes diversity, equity and inclusion and fights racism, gender inequality and discrimination in all forms

Job Requirements

QUALIFICATIONS

• BA/BED  Degree in education or related fields with relevant work experience

• Training in project or program, strategy design and ensuring quality and child right based programing is an asset

• 12 years’ experience of leading the design and implementation of major humanitarian.

• Development programmes in education

• Proven experience in education policy and strategy analysis work

• Through understanding of the education sector in Ethiopia

• Familiar with education systems (humanitarian/cluster systems as needed) for ex. the INEE Minimum Standards, the key issues related to Sustainable Development Goal 4 – to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all.

• Track record in successful business development/fundraising in relation to major bilateral and multilateral donors

•  Demonstrated program design, monitoring and evaluation skills, including designing pathways to sustainable impact at scale.

  • Experience of strategy development and planning\

  • Experience of context, capacity and policy analysis, and influencing and advocacy at regional/international level in order to hold duty bearers to account to realize children’s rights.

  • Skilled at networking, representation and partnership development in order promote learning, strengthen civil society and mobilize resources.

  • Able to use digital software for data collection and analysis such as KOBO TOOL BOX and SPSS.

  • Experienced in generating and use of data and evidence to innovate, deliver, learn and share what works and what doesn’t work for children

  •   Experience of promoting quality and impact through at least one cross-cutting area: gender equality and inclusion, adaptive and safer programming; child rights; disability; migration and displacement

  • Experience of supporting humanitarian preparedness, response and recovery

  • Significant experience in facilitating training in education technical areas, project design and development, and in coaching and mentoring

  • Fluent in English and high level of English writing skills.

  • Skill in using different computer application soft wares, the ability to fluently speak and write in Amharic language.

  • Support Humanitarian colleagues (as needed) to develop emergency strategy, preparedness plans, and conduct sectoral assessments (including gender analysis and disability situation analysis, using SC assessment processes and tools) and to design and deliver emergency response and recovery programmes. Ensure synergies between humanitarian education thematic area teams, data and programme design.

  • Monitor trends in order to ensure early action; and lead technical design and implementation and technical coordination of humanitarian responses

  • Ensure the quality, clarity and consistency of technical components of internal and external reports (e.g. programme reports, sit-reps, internal updates), working closely with awards, programme implementation and communications colleagues as needed.

  C.  Networking & External Engagement:

  In alignment with SCI-Ethiopia CO strategy, engage in strategic positioning with donors, partners and government, and ensure that Save the Children is a partner of choice in education

• Strengthen civil society engagement in national dialogues and policy processes through working closely with advocacy and child rights governance colleagues. Ensure that the diverse voices of children, girls and boys are equitably heard and represented in our education work.

• Represent the education sector in national and local government, donors, and partner platforms as required.

• Leverage and liaise with technical colleagues from across Save the Children, including technical working groups and centers of excellence, ensuring that learning from the Country Office is shared with others and global lessons brought back.

Application Information

Please attach a copy of your CV and cover letter with your application, and include details of your current remuneration and salary expectations. A copy of the full role profile can be found at http://www.savethechildren.net/careers

We need to keep children safe so our selection process, which includes rigorous background checks, reflects our commitment to the protection of children from abuse.

All employees are expected to carry out their duties in accordance with our global anti-harassment policy.

HOW TO APPLY

Apply using This Link