Description

This is an exciting leadership opportunity for someone with high learning agility and maturity to conceive, advocate for, and implement ECE strategy. You will ensure that it develops and implements an at-scale ECE program in collaboration with state and district-level governments with the right design for integrating pre-primary into school education, including

enabling policies, academic inputs, and governance structures to improve quality learning time and student learning outcomes.

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You will be responsible for:

● Operationalising at-scale state pre-primary policy roadmap and managing a State Program Management Unit (SPMU)

○ Generate strong buy-in for ECE policy priorities within the state government

○ Enable critical budgetary support and administrative decisions

○ Ensure recruitment and training of ECE educators

○ Operationalise materials, processes and infrastructure for ECE centres

○ Establish robust data-driven monitoring of ECE processes and outcomes

● Developing evidence-backed, user-friendly and contextualised structured pedagogy resources and professional development programs.

○ Align ECE curriculum with national and international benchmarks

○ Support teacher Guides and teaching-learning material development

○ Strengthen implementation protocols and teacher professional development

○ Facilitate workshops with ECE academic stakeholders and domain experts

○ Continuously test and improve program design with end users

● Implementing an exemplar pre-primary model pilot to demonstrate ECE best practices with impact evidence

○ Generate strong buy-in for the ECE program pilot by district officials

Design, test and implement solutions for last-mile ECE implementation

○ Ensure consistent academic and system support from field staff

○ Generate data and evidence for monitoring and iterating program implementation

● Deepening salience for ECE in the ecosystem and advancing the credibility as a critical system enabler and a catalytic implementer

○ Establish salience ECE (especially school readiness for 5-6-year-olds) across senior central and state government leaders, policy influencers and public-at-large

○ Generate action research on ECE systemic enablers and best practices

○ Create blogs, op-eds and presentations to communicate ECE perspectives

○ Convene education eco-system experts and organisations behind ECE priorities

● Lead and build a diverse, high-performing team working on state reform, district ops and academic design

○ Create a growth-oriented and results-driven work environment

○ Implement quality assurance processes for timely, high-quality outputs

○ Institutionalise a culture of learning by doing in the field

○ Promote continuous team development in governance, ECE, and management skills

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Required competencies:

We seek a driven and experienced education program implementation professional with an established track record of implementing large-scale education system reform programs in the government sector. The ideal candidate would have:

● 9+ years of consulting or program management experience in government-facing projects with a master’s degree in management, education or public policy

● Strategic Leadership and Stakeholder Management: Ability to operationalise large-scale policy roadmaps and manage state-level program units with strong stakeholder engagement.

o Influence senior-level government relationships at state and district levels

o Lead Project Management Units (PMUs) in the public sector (preferably in education)

o Proactively resolved breakdowns through collaborative problem-solving

● Program Design and Implementation: Expertise in developing and aligning evidence-backed, user-friendly pedagogy resources and professional development programs

o Deliver outcomes in complex, multi-faceted state-wide programs under tight time and capacity constraints

o Integrate technical and governance workstreams towards project success

o Ready for 10-15 days of monthly travel to remote project sites

● Monitoring and Evaluation: Proficiency in establishing and utilising robust data-driven monitoring systems for ECE processes and outcomes.

o Strengthen systems to capture authentic data on key system performance indicators

o Use data dashboards to derive insights on program implementation

o Drive decision-making through rigorous review cadences and follow-through

● Communication and Advocacy: Expertise in establishing salience among key stakeholders,

generating actionable research, and effectively communicating CSF’s perspectives.

o Persuasively communicate technical ideas to a policy audience

o Generate thought leadership content and facilitate the convening of experts

● Team Leadership and Development: Leadership in building high-performing, diverse teams

with a focus on growth, quality assurance, and continuous development

o Lead diverse mid-sized teams (6 currently growing to 10-15 by next year)

o Enhance team performance through coaching, feedback, and skill development

o Collaborate with State, Policy & Advocacy and Research M&E teams on ECE