| |
Archive for
June, 2010
Tuesday, June 29th, 2010
Location: Nairobi, Kenya
Our client is a startup for profit company, revolutionizing education across Africa with a truly unique business model. The company has launched a large-scale franchise-like network of ultra low-cost for-profit private primary schools across Africa. Their schools profitably deliver high-quality education for less than $4 per child per month, enabling local school managers to operate their school businesses profitably, while creating a highly successful business at the central level.
They have already launched the first 12 schools in their network in the slums of Nairobi with tremendous success, and plan to rapidly scale the company to serve more than 1 million families in Africa.
About this position
We are seeking a full-time Director of Support Services, who, underneath our Head of School Operations, will be responsible for the support of all the schools within our network. This responsibility includes improving upon the design of our existing processes and tools used by our support personnel to audit and ensure the quality of our schools, as well as the actual day-to-day oversight and management of a rapidly growing team of support personnel.
The company has developed extensive systems and tools for its operations that allow someone they hire from the local community to easily and successfully open and manage the operations of a school – they call this our “School in Box” model. Most of the systems and tools developed are low-tech and paper-based because of the environment in which they work. It starts with our very detailed Operators Manual and spans across all instructional, financial, operations and human resource management issues and systems.
They have a team of support personnel, called School Operations Officers who work with a group of our schools to ensure that the management and monitoring systems and tools that are part of our “School in a Box” are effectively implemented at individual schools both by school managers and teachers. This includes every aspect of the school, from finance, recruiting, instructional delivery, facilities management and more.
As their network scales to thousands of schools, hundreds of School Operations Officers and Operation Officer Managers will need to be hired and supervised. It is the job of the Director of Support Services to ensure that they can continue to cost-effectively support and monitor all of their schools through their team of School Operations Officers and Managers.
About You
You have 5-10 years experience managing a large-scale field support or supervisor team for a business with many geographically separated units, shops, stores, etc
You have experience developing detailed systems and processes that can be used by support personnel to audit businesses in the field.
You have demonstrated capacity to think way outside the box in identifying critical issues and developing non-traditional approaches to solve them.
You bring with you experience in scaling and managing a team of support personnel
Experience in working in very poor communities (slums) is a real plus
You are a very process or system-oriented person.
You are very hands-on and not afraid of getting your hands dirty
You have experience managing projects with many moving pieces, and building and managing teams of people
You function well in a fast-paced informal environment where constant change is the norm and the bar for quality is set high.
Experience in education or schools NOT required.
Franchise or chain management experience in Kenya is a real plus
Our team has a passionate belief that basic primary education is critical to the development of every child, family, community and nation. We believe that it is possible to address this critical need for poor families through new and innovative approaches leveraging the private sector, and that by providing low-cost but high-quality primary education, we will give millions of children the opportunity to accomplish their dreams. We are looking for someone who wants to join us in this rewarding task.
To apply for this position, please e mail edujobs@tackafrica.com quoting the Job Reference. Please attach your C.V. in word format with a detailed application letter (including your salary expectation and availability) in line with the job description and attach a recent photograph of yourself. Please note you will only be contacted if shortlisted for the position.
Posted in
Education, Management |
No Comments »
Monday, June 21st, 2010
Education|Kenya
About the Company
Our client is a startup revolutionizing education across Africa with a truly unique business model. The company has launched a large-scale franchise-like network of ultra low-cost for-profit private primary schools across Africa. Our schools profitably deliver high-quality education for less than $4 per child per month, enabling local school managers to operate their school businesses profitably, while creating a highly successful business at the central level.
We have already launched the first 12 schools in our network in the slums of Nairobi with tremendous success, and plan to rapidly scale the company to serve more than 1 million families in Africa.
About this position
Bridge International has developed an extensive system and set of tools for its School Managers that allows someone the company hires from the local community to easily and successfully manage the operations of a school – we call this our “School in Box” model. Most of the systems and tools we developed are low-tech and paper-based because of the environment in which we work. The “box” starts with our very comprehensive School Manager Manual and includes a detailed step-by-step, day-by-day set of processes that span across all financial, operation, instructional and human resource management issues. Due to the standardization and systemitizing, our operational approach is most similar to that of other large scale chains of service businesses, like McDonalds.
Similar to a McDonalds, the success of our schools depends critically on the training of our School Managers on how to use the tools, systems, and approaches in our “School in a Box” so that they can successfully manage a Bridge International Academy from a business perspective, as well as the training of our support team (School Operations Officers) who individually supervise in the field a group of School Managers.
We are seeking a full-time Manager/Director of Training for School Operations who will both initially lead all of these training, and very critically, be responsible for the redevelopment, enhancements, and improvements to the design of the training programs themselves. A key component of this role will be the ability for the Senior Training Specialist to design these trainings for scale. In the coming years, Bridge International Academies will be launching hundreds of new schools each year, requiring the training of hundreds of new School Managers and dozens of School Operations Officers. Because of this scale, it’s critical that we ensure our trainings can be effective and managed to deliver training with these large numbers of trainees.
This position is about training on the business, management and operational approaches of managing schools. It is not a position about training on specific educational and pedagogical approaches to teaching. The content-specific sessions about how teaching and instruction works at our schools will come from this person working closely with our instructional team. However, it is expected that this person will after extensive exposure to the key elements will be able to personally train School Managers on these areas, but from the perspective of how School Managers exert oversight and auditing of the instructional aspects of the school.
More specifically, the role of the Manager/Director of Training (School Operations) includes:
• Redesigning the existing training program to ensure that all School Managers can successfully implement each and every detailed Bridge International system and process, and manage a school according to Bridge International specific rules and procedures.
• Using manuals and tools from our “School in a Box”, develop all training materials needed during sessions
• Enhance and redesign training schedules
• Enhance and develop new training exercises to insure during training that candidates are successfully grasping material
• Develop evaluation tools and exams that will be used to select whih candidates from training will be offered positions
• Develop Field Exercises for trainees to expose them to and evaluate them on the work that happens in the slums for marketing and recruiting new students as well as actual experience with existing schools
• Organize, manage and personally conduct training of School Managers and School Operations Officers three times each year. Trainings are approximately 6 weeks long full-time, Monday through Saturday.
• Spend time in the field with existing School Managers and Operations Officers to identify specific issues and areas that need to be enhanced or redesigned in the training to reduce issues in the field post training
• Work closely with multiple departments at the company (instruction, construction, etc) to ensure all relevant content-specific areas are covered well in trainings
• Provide detailed feedback and analysis based on training successes and failures to HR to determine how to better target School Manager candidates
• Visit schools regularly and work closely with School Operations Officers to assess additional training needs
• This is a very hands-on job, both in terms of implementing the training, but also to be sometimes out in the field (in our case, the slums of Nairobi) working with and observing School Managers 10% – 20% of the time.
About You
• You have 5-10 years experience designing and implementing complex training programs focusing on knowledge transfer and specific skill building for a particular role or job in any industry
• Rather than trainings focused on general skills or knowledge-transfer, we are looking for someone who has had to design and implement trainings for candidates for a very specific job or position.
• You have experience in designing and implementing trainings to a wide variety of people in terms of educational background, skill levels, and economic status. A real plus would be experience in delivering complex trainings to individuals with less formal education and work history.
• Experience managing large-scale multi-site simultaneous trainings is a real plus
• Experience in education is NOT a requirement.
• You have experience in identifying a person’s weaknesses and ability to figure out how to support their growth.
• You are a fantastic communicator and a team player and can strike an instant rapport with people from all different walks of life and background (the trainee school managers for Bridge live in the poor communities that we serve)
• Your inter-personal skills are extraordinary
• You have experience in managing a team of people to help implement and support a training program
• You are not afraid of getting your hands dirty
• You function well in a fast-paced informal environment where constant change is the norm and the bar for quality is set high.
• Bachelors degree
Our team has a passionate belief that basic primary education is critical to the development of every child, family, community and nation. We believe that it is possible to address this critical need for poor families through new and innovative approaches leveraging the private sector, and that by providing low-cost but high-quality primary education, we will give millions of children the opportunity to accomplish their dreams. We are looking for someone who wants to join us in this rewarding task.
Other Requirements/Skills:
• Ability to conceptualize, design and develop content in a training-friendly way.
• Computer-friendly
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills
• Must be a team player and open to new approaches and ideas
• Strong mentoring, auditing and reporting skills
• Ability to organize, prioritize, and manage multiple tasks
TO APPLY:
To apply for this position, please e mail your CV, (in Word format only) detailed application letter and recent photograph of yourself, ensuring you quote the JOB REFERENCE to edujobs@tackafrica.com Please do not send through scanned documents. Please note that only shortlisted applicants will be contacted.
Posted in
Management |
No Comments »
Monday, June 21st, 2010
Education | Kenya
About the Company
Our client is a start-up revolutionizing education across Africa with a truly unique business model and instructional program. The company has launched a large-scale, franchise-like network of ultra low-cost, for-profit private primary schools in Kenya, and will expand across Africa. Our schools profitably deliver high-quality education for less than $4 per child per month. Local school managers are able to operate their school businesses profitably, while creating a highly successful business at the central level.
They have already launched the first 12 schools within their network in the slums of Nairobi with tremendous success, and plan to rapidly scale the company to serve more than 1 million families in Africa.
About this position
Bridge International has developed an extremely detailed and rigorous instructional approach to enable a broad universe of potential teachers from local slum neighbourhoods to be extremely effective in the classroom. Our teachers come to us with a minimum of secondary school certificates, some with and some without previous teaching experience. The core of this instructional approach includes:
• Scripted Lesson Plans (word for word, action-by-action scripts for every lesson in the classroom)
• Instructional Compliance Systems
- Assessment Recording
- Remediation rules and processes
- Tutoring Tracking
- Weekly Class Reports
- Weekly Instructional Compliance Reviews
• Detailed Teacher Guide
• Detailed and rigorous policies around everything from classroom management, instructional progression, attendance, discipline, etc
This system is complemented with extensive training, support, guidance and frequent auditing at multiple levels. We call this our “School in Box” model. Due to the standardization and systematizing, our overall operational approach is most similar to that of other well-run, large-scale chains of service businesses, such as those in retail and food services. The critical difference being that our service is world-class quality but ultra-affordable primary education.
The success of our schools depends critically on the training of our teachers on how to be effective instructional leaders using the extensive scripts, tools, systems, and approaches in our “School in a Box”, as well as the training of our headquarters-based school-support team.
We are seeking a full-time Manager/Director of Teacher Training who will both initially lead all of these training programs, and very critically, be responsible for the redevelopment, enhancements, and improvements to the design of the training programs themselves. A key component of this role will be the ability for the Manager/Director to design these trainings for scale. In the coming years, Bridge International Academies will be launching hundreds of new schools each year, requiring the training of thousands of new teachers. Because of this scale, it’s critical that we ensure our trainings can be effective and managed to deliver training with these large numbers of trainees.
More specifically, the role of the Manager/Director of Teacher Training includes:
•Redesigning the existing training program to ensure that all inductees are taught to become successful teachers, and can successfully implement each and every detailed aspect of the Bridge International instructional system and process.
- Using our written teacher guides, scripts and tools from our “School in a Box”, develop all training materials needed during sessions
- Enhance and redesign training schedules
- Enhance and develop new training exercises to insure during training that candidates are successfully grasping material and are prepared to succeed in classroom conditions
- Develop evaluation tools and assessments that will be used to select which candidates from training will be offered positions
- Develop exercises during trainings that mimic conditions of real classroom teaching and management to ensure that skills learned in training directly translate to experiences once the candidates are offered the jobs.
- Develop extensive teacher behavior “best practices” that will ensure that a new teacher is prepared to succeed in classroom management through a step-by-step guide
• Organize, manage and personally conduct training of Teachers three times each year. Trainings are approximately 6 weeks long full-time, Monday through Saturday.
• Over time hire and manage a growing team of trainers who will implement this training program at multiple sites, multiple times each year. Develop tools to oversee, monitor and audit training sessions to ensure that such trainings are being implemented with fidelity
• Spend time in the field with existing teachers and support officers to identify specific issues and areas that need to be enhanced or redesigned in the training to reduce issues in the field post training
• Work closely with multiple departments at the company (instruction, operations, etc) to ensure all relevant content-specific areas are covered well in trainings
• Provide detailed feedback and analysis based on training successes and failures to HR to determine how to better target teacher candidates
• Visit schools regularly and work closely with support officers to assess additional training needs
This is a very hands-on job, both in terms of implementing the training, but also to be sometimes out in the field (in our case, the slums of Nairobi) working with and observing teachers 10% – 20% of the time.
About You
• You have 5-10 years experience designing and implementing complex training programs focusing on knowledge transfer and specific skill building for a particular role or job in any industry
• Rather than trainings focused on general skills or knowledge-transfer, we are looking for someone who has had to design and implement trainings for candidates for a very specific job or position.
• You know that great teachers are not born; they are made. Teaching is a skill that can be taught.
• You have experience in designing and implementing trainings to a wide variety of people in terms of educational background, skill levels, and economic status. A real plus would be experience in delivering complex trainings to individuals with less formal education and work history.
• Experience managing large-scale multi-site simultaneous trainings is a real plus
• Experience in education or educational training is a plus.
• You have experience in identifying a person’s weaknesses and ability to figure out how to support their growth.
• You are a fantastic communicator and a team player and can strike an instant rapport with people from all different walks of life and background (the trainee school managers for Bridge live in the poor communities that we serve)
• Your inter-personal skills are extraordinary
• You have experience in managing a team of people to help implement and support a training program
• You are not afraid of getting your hands dirty
• You function well in a fast-paced informal environment where constant change is the norm and the bar for quality is set high.
• Bachelors degree
Our team has a passionate belief that basic primary education is critical to the development of every child, family, community and nation. We believe that it is possible to address this critical need for poor families through new and innovative approaches leveraging the private sector, and that by providing low-cost but high-quality primary education, we will give millions of children the opportunity to accomplish their dreams. We are looking for someone who wants to join us in this rewarding task.
Other Requirements/Skills:
• Ability to conceptualize, design and develop content in a training-friendly way.
• Computer-friendly
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills
• Must be a team player and open to new approaches and ideas
• Strong mentoring, auditing and reporting skills
• Ability to organize, prioritize, and manage multiple tasks
TO APPLY
To apply for this position, please e mail your CV, (in Word format only) detailed application letter and recent photograph of yourself, ensuring you quote the JOB REFERENCE to edujobs@tackafrica.com Please do not send through scanned documents. Please note that only shortlisted applicants will be contacted.
Posted in
Education, Uncategorized |
No Comments »
Monday, June 21st, 2010
Education| Kenya
Our client, a low cost for profit organization, is launching a large-scale franchise of ultra low-cost for-profit private primary schools across Africa. Their approach addresses the critical problems facing education systems in Africa, the lack of accountability and absence of incentives for improving performance and educational outcomes. Because of how they have designed their model, the are able to cost-effectively deliver high-quality education so that it is affordable even to those living on dollar a day poverty (charging less than $4 per child per month), while enabling local franchise owners to operate their school businesses profitably, and create a financially profitable business at the central franchise level.
They have already launched the first two schools in their franchise in Kenya with tremendous success, and plan to rapidly scale the company to serve more than 1 million families in Africa.
ABOUT THE POSITION.
Our client is seeking a full-time School Operations Officer, who from the business-side will help support and monitor the operations of a group of schools within their network.
The organisation has developed extensive system and tools for its operations that allow someone they hire from the local community to easily and successfully open and manage the operations of a school – we call this our “School in Box” model. Most of the systems and tools that are developed are low-tech and paper-based because of the environment in which they work. It starts with their very detailed Operators Manual and spans across all instructional, financial, operations and human resource management issues and systems.
School Operations Officers work with a group of local headmasters to help ensure that the management and monitoring systems and tools that are part of our “School in a Box” are effectively implemented at individual schools. This position is also critical in providing feedback to the central headquarters as to ways to improve upon these systems.
School Operations Officers will have a particular focus on all of the non-instructional elements of the operations at the school site. These include:
-Marketing & Recruiting New Students
-Student Payment Systems
-Personnel Management
-Rules & Procedures
-Facilities Management
And more
This is a very hands-on job, and so we expect the School Operations Officer to be in the field (in our case, the slums of Nairobi) working with schools about 80% of the time.
ABOUT YOU
You are one of those rare multi-talented people who is a very keen observer, as well as a very analytical problem solver.
You have years of experience simultaneously managing and helping grow multiple
small businesses units in challenging environments. But most importantly have
demonstrated capacity to think outside the box in identifying critical issues and
developing non-traditional approaches to solve them.
Experience in working in very poor communities (slums) is a real plus
You are incredibly data-driven, analytical, and excited about developing an environment and processes in which high-quality data is regularly collected and used to manage and improve our franchise schools.
You are not afraid of getting your hands dirty
You have experience managing projects with many moving pieces, and building and managing teams of people
You function well in a fast-paced informal environment where constant change is the norm and the bar for quality is set high.
Our team has a passionate belief that basic primary education is critical to the development of every child, family, community and nation. We believe that it is possible to address this critical need for poor families through new and innovative approaches leveraging the private sector, and that by providing low-cost but high-quality primary education, we will give millions of children the opportunity to accomplish their dreams. We are looking for someone who wants to join us in this rewarding task.
Requirements/Skills:
Bachelors degree
5+ years experience in operations, management, education or related experience
-Franchise or chain management experience in Kenya is a real plus
-Driven, disciplined, self-motivated, and entrepreneurial
-Excellent verbal and written communication skills
-Must be a team player and open to new approaches and ideas
-Strong project management skills
-Ability to organize, prioritize, and manage multiple tasks
TO APPLY
To apply for this position, please e mail your CV, (in Word format only) detailed application letter and recent photograph of yourself, ensuring you quote the JOB REFERENCE to edujobs@tackafrica.com Please do not send through scanned documents. Please note that only shortlisted applicants will be contacted.
Posted in
Education, Uncategorized |
No Comments »
Monday, June 21st, 2010
Education|Kenya
Our client is a startup revolutionizing education across Africa with a truly unique business model. The company has launched a large-scale franchise-like network of ultra low-cost for-profit private primary schools across Africa. Their schools profitably deliver high-quality education for less than $4 per child per month, enabling local school managers to operate their school businesses profitably, while creating a highly successful business at the central level. They have launched our first seven schools in Kenya, have five more opening in May and plan to rapidly scale the company to serve more than 1 million students.
About this position
We are looking for a Head of Recruiting and Human Resources. Because of the scale of their operations, the company will eventually need to hire thousands of new teachers each year, hundreds of new school managers, and dozens of headquarters support personnel to manage this scale. It is critical to their success to be able to design and manage streamlined recruiting, vetting and hiring processes to find the right people and to do so in a cost-effective manner. It is the role of the Head of Recruiting and Human Resources to accomplish this. While the Senior Recruiter and Human Resources Manager will manage a small team, we are looking for someone who is good with the details, and ready to get their hands dirty.
Hiring responsibilities will include:
- Teachers & School Managers from the slum communities where their schools are launched
- HQ school support personnel (School Operations Officers and Professional Development coaches)
- Other HQ hires
More specifically:
Setup and manage large-scale streamlined hiring processes for teachers and school managers
Recruit and source candidates from the slums
Recruit and managing contractors from the local communities to regularly hang up posters about openings, as well as a postering supervisor to ensure that posters are hung
Schedule mass interview and screening days (interviewing between 30-100 people in one day)
Refine and continue to develop streamlined process of screening many candidates in a single day
Find space/rooms to do mass interviews
Use existing and develop new screening assessments (for example, math and english tests, systems and accounting exams, written applications, public speaking exercises, mock sales pitches, personality tests)
Streamline the process of administering, scoring, advancing candidates to next round
Tracking, Recording results and inviting back finalist candidates
Scheduling final round interviews with relevant department members
Reference checking
Making offers
Implementation of HR software solution to manage database, and hiring process and tracking.
Including database of CVs and contact info, results of interviews, etc
Manage the process of hiring personnel for headquarters
Work with department heads to define new hire requirements, job description, define screening exercises, and process.
Lead candidate sourcing (headhunting, advertising online, newspaper, and postering)
Manage CV screening based on pre-defined criteria
Manage and conduct initial interviews and screening exercise processes
Track candidates through the hiring process
Schedule interviews, follow-ups, reference checks, etc
Managing onboarding process
Contract signing, sign up and explanation of medical insurance, NHIF, NSSF, etc
Manage ongoing Human Resources issues
Policies, guidelines, salary reviews
About You
- You have minimum of 5 years experience with recruiting and managing hiring processes for a company with high volumes of new hires
- You have experience in managing human resource issues for a company with complex human resource needs
- You are very systems-oriented, and have experience in developing systems and processes to manage a complex hiring process for many positions simultaneously
- You have experience headhunting for key positions
- ”Love to get my hands dirty” is your middle name. While you will have a small team to help you, you have also demonstrated your willingness to jump into the very nitty-gritty details and get done what is needed to get done.
- You have a strong ability to quickly understand what is required of a position, define the detailed requirements, and know how to source, screen and interview people who will fit that role.
- You function well in a fast-paced, informal environment where constant change is the norm and the bar for quality is set high
TO APPLY:
To apply for this position, please e mail your CV, (in Word format only) detailed application letter and recent photograph of yourself, ensuring you quote the JOB REFERENCE to edujobs@tackafrica.com Please do not send through scanned documents. Please note that only shortlisted applicants will be contacted.
<!–ddfm1–>
Posted in
Management, Uncategorized |
No Comments »
Monday, June 21st, 2010
Education | Nairobi, Kenya
About the company
Our client operates a start up revolutionizing education across Africa with a truly unique business model and instructional program. The company has launched a large-scale, franchise-like network of ultra low-cost, for-profit private primary schools in Kenya, and will expand across Africa. Our schools profitably deliver high-quality education for less than $4 per child per month. Local school managers are able to operate their school businesses profitably, while creating a highly successful business at the central level. This ensures that the school is not dependent on the vagaries of donor funding, but will rather continue to serve the communities as long as parents value the educational service we provide. To ensure the delivery of high quality education, the company writes its own curriculum using Direct Instruction methodology. They also train and support our own teachers.
They have already launched the first 12 schools in our network in the slums of Nairobi with tremendous success, and plan to rapidly scale the company to serve more than 1 million families in Africa.
About this position
The company has developed Version 1.0 of an extremely detailed and rigorous instructional approach to enable a broad universe of teachers from local slum neighborhoods to be extremely effective in the classroom, overseen and managed by a school manager implementing a specialized support and oversight system, monitored and audited by a field-based operations team from headquarters. Our teachers come to us with a minimum of secondary school certificates, some with and some without previous teaching experience, and our school managers are also residents from the local community with maturity and experience in some management or business capacity. The core of this instructional approach includes:
• a Direct Instruction or scripted curriculum (word for word, action-by-action scripts for every lesson in the classroom) based on the national syllabus
• a continuous assessment program integrated with the curriculum, using specialized assessment recording forms and easy to follow rules for when teachers should continue on to new material or remediate on previous lessons
• an intensive teacher training program (both induction and ongoing teacher support systems in the field), enabling us to hire local teachers with minimum secondary school education, without previous teacher certification, and provide them with the training, skills and support needed to be highly effective in our classrooms
• an integrated tutoring program to ensure that students don’t fall behind
• an extended day/week schedule to allow for maximum “time on task”
• an instructional compliance system managed by both school managers at the school as well as headquarters-based school support officers, that include weekly instructional compliance reviews, detailed classroom observation rubrics, multi-part instructional oversight and compliance checklists, random spot checks and guided review of assessment results and tutoring placement records, etc.
• a detailed Teacher Guide
• detailed and rigorous policies around everything from classroom management, instructional progression, attendance, discipline, etc
This system is complemented with extensive training, support, guidance and frequent auditing at multiple levels. They call this their “School in Box” model. Due to the standardization and systematizing, our overall operational approach is most similar to that of other well-run, large-scale chains of service businesses, such as those in retail and food services. The critical difference being that their service is world-class quality but ultra-affordable primary education.
They are seeking a full-time Head of Instruction who will be responsible for all of these instructional elements of our “School in a Box”. The continued success of their schools, and their ability to scale to serve millions of children, depends critically on the enhancement, improvement, management and continued development of all of these core educational elements of their “School in a Box” model. The Head of Instruction will be responsible for upgrading the instructional components of the “School in a Box” from version 1.0, to 2.0, and eventually to 8.0 to support a network of thousands of schools, with tens of thousands of teachers and millions of students.
This is an IDEAL job for an entrepreneurial superstar with 5+ years of educational expertise, especially in teacher training, curriculum & instruction, assessment and school management. You will become part of their senior management team that is based in Nairobi, Kenya. This job will require you to relocate for a minimum three-year commitment. Since we are still a start-up company, the Head of Instruction must be incredibly hands-on.
About You
• You are one of those rare multi-talented people who is both deeply creative and analytical.
• You bring with you deep and broad experience across many facets of the educational process, but most importantly have demonstrated capacity to think way outside the box in identifying critical educational issues and developing non-traditional approaches to solve them.
• You know that a great teacher is not born, but made. Teaching is a skill that can be taught.
• In particular you have experience designing and delivering
- detailed instructional materials (ideally scripted or Direct Instruction curriculum)
- high-quality teacher training programs, and ongoing professional development support continual assessment systems,
- other teacher support materials, including detailed teacher guides, remediation programs & supplemental resources
- point-by-point classroom management guidelines and key behaviors of successful teachers
• Experience working with schools in the developing world is a plus, especially Africa, but in general you would be very comfortable with living and working in the developing world.
• You love data and believe that the educational process can be particularly data-rich. You are incredibly data-driven, analytical, and excited about developing an academic environment and processes in which high-quality data is regularly collected and used to manage and improve our franchise-like schools.
• You are not afraid of getting your hands dirty, and will thrive on the opportunity to initially both design and personally implement many of the training, systems and materials with actual teachers and students at our initial schools.
• You have experience managing projects with many moving pieces, and building and managing teams of people
• You are comfortable and familiar with identifying, analyzing, interpreting and applying the results of appropriate high-quality educational research.
• You function well in a fast-paced informal environment where constant change is the norm and the bar for quality is set high.
• Bachelors or Masters degree (education degree a plus)
The team has a passionate belief that basic primary education is critical to the development of every child, family, community and nation. They believe that it is possible to address this critical need for poor families through new and innovative approaches leveraging the private sector, and that by providing low-cost but high-quality primary education, they will give millions of children the opportunity to accomplish their dreams. They are looking for people who want to join them in this rewarding task.
To apply for this position, please e mail your CV, (in Word format only) detailed application letter and recent photograph of yourself, ensuring you quote the JOB REFERENCE to edujobs@tackafrica. com Please do not send through scanned documents. Please note that only shortlisted applicants will be contacted.
Posted in
Management, Uncategorized |
No Comments »
Monday, June 21st, 2010
About the company
The company is a startup revolutionizing education across Africa with a truly unique business model and instructional program. The company has launched a large-scale, franchise-like network of ultra low-cost, for-profit private primary schools in Kenya, and will expand across Africa. Their schools profitably deliver high-quality education for less than $4 per child per month. Local school managers are able to operate their school businesses profitably, while creating a highly successful business at the central level. This ensures that the school is not dependent on the vagaries of donor funding, but will rather continue to serve the communities as long as parents value the educational service we provide. To ensure the delivery of high quality education, the company writes its own curriculum using Direct Instruction methodology. They also train and support their own teachers.
They have already launched the first 12 schools in their network in the slums of Nairobi with tremendous success, and plan to rapidly scale the company to serve more than 1 million families in Africa.
About this position
The company has developed Version 1.0 of an extremely detailed and rigorous instructional approach to enable a broad universe of teachers from local slum neighborhoods to be extremely effective in the classroom, overseen and managed by a school manager implementing a specialized support and oversight system, monitored and audited by a field-based operations team from headquarters. Critical elements of the the company instructional approach include:
• a Direct Instruction or scripted curriculum (word for word, action-by-action scripts for every lesson in the classroom) based on the national syllabus
• a continuous assessment program integrated with the curriculum, using specialized assessment recording forms and easy to follow rules for when teachers should continue on to new material or remediate on previous lessons
• an integrated tutoring and enrichment program to ensure that students don’t fall behind, and those who are ahead of the curve are constantly engaged.
Due to the standardization and systematizing, their overall operational approach is most similar to that of other well-run, large-scale chains of service businesses, such as those in retail and food services. The critical difference being that their service is world-class quality but ultra-affordable primary education.
They are seeking a full-time Director/Manager of Curriculum who will be responsible for all of these curriculum-based elements of their “School in a Box” (excluding the training program). You will be responsible for managing and expanding their small existing team of curriculum writers/editors in Nairobi. You will be responsible for ensuring that the curriculum that the company uses delivers a high-quality education—a world-class education—to children in slum and other impoverished environments. To ensure this delivery, you will be responsible for not only managing the production of the curriculum itself, but for ensuring that it is written in a manner that ensures effective classroom delivery and assessment. While you will head and manage the team’s development effort, we also expect that you will initially also be very hands-on, personally contributing to the editing and writing of script, exercises, homework, and assessments as well.
The continued success of their schools, and their ability to scale to serve millions of children, depends critically on the enhancement, improvement, management and continued development of all of these core educational elements of their “School in a Box” model. The Director/Manager of Curriculum will be responsible for upgrading the curricular elements of their “School in a Box” from version 1.0, to 2.0, and eventually to 8.0 to support a network of thousands of schools, with tens of thousands of teachers and millions of students.
About You
• You are one of those rare multi-talented people who is both deeply creative and analytical.
• You have 5-10 years experience with a curriculum/instructional materials development company or organization
• You have experience in the entire curriculum development process (from concept through to production), both as a personal contributor as well as managing teams of individuals.
• Extensive experience with Direct Instruction is a real plus
• You have substantial experience in designing and developing assessments (both formative and summative), remediation and enrichments materials, teacher guides, and more
• You have demonstrated capacity to think way outside the box in identifying critical instructional issues and developing non-traditional approaches to solve them.
• Experience working with schools in the developing world is a plus, especially Africa, but in general you would be very comfortable with living and working in the developing world, and can tailor ytheir experiences in curriculum development to be relevant for the environment of their schools and communities.
• You love data and believe that the educational process can be particularly data-rich. You are incredibly data-driven, analytical, and excited about using regularly collected data to improve the quality of their instructional materials
• You are not afraid of getting ytheir hands dirty
• You have experience managing projects with many moving pieces, and building and managing teams of people
• You function well in a fast-paced informal environment where constant change is the norm and the bar for quality is set high.
• Bachelors or Masters degree (education degree a plus)
Their team has a passionate belief that basic primary education is critical to the development of every child, family, community and nation. They believe that it is possible to address this critical need for poor families through new and innovative approaches leveraging the private sector, and that by providing low-cost but high-quality primary education, we will give millions of children the opportunity to accomplish their dreams. We are looking for people who want to join us in this rewarding task.
To apply for this position, please e mail your CV, (in Word format only) detailed application letter and recent photograph of yourself to edujobs@tackafrica.com, ensuring you quote the JOB REFERENCE. Please do not send through scanned documents. Please note that only shortlisted applicants will be contacted.
Posted in
Education |
No Comments »
|
|
