Organization: UN Children"s Fund
Country: United States of America
Closing date: 11 Aug 2015
Background
Education is a human right and is at the center of promoting equity, justice, and prosperity in society. While there has been considerable progress on increasing school enrolment over the last two decades, there are still 58 million children of primary school age and 63 million adolescents of lower secondary school age who are excluded from education. Despite the promises of the Millennium Declaration and Education for All, around the world, one child in eleven still does not complete even a full course of primary education. UNICEF works at global, regional, and country level with partners including national governments, other UN agencies, donors, and non-governmental organizations to help children achieve their right to education.
As part of these efforts, UNICEF contributes to enhancing the monitoring and reporting of progress in education. In line with the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness, this work is focused on building sustainable capacity for monitoring at the local, district, and national levels in partner countries, and involves improvements in the way that data is gathered, analyzed, reported, used for planning, and fed back to schools and communities. In parallel with this work, UNICEF is also supporting a range of innovations aimed at improving the collection and use of data, including real-time monitoring systems using mobile technologies.
Since 2012, UNICEF has had a partnership with Educate A Child (EAC), a program of the Education Above All Foundation in Qatar. EAC currently co-funds education programs with seven UNICEF Country Offices in Chad, Sudan, South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia, Yemen and Comoros. Country Offices in Kenya, Nigeria, Mali, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Djibouti and Pakistan are expected to submit proposals for co-funding over the coming months, and initial Expressions of Interest may be developed in other countries in the near future. As part of the reporting requirements in these programs, UNICEF Country Offices must provide six-monthly monitoring reports on the numbers of new enrolments, repeaters, grade promotions and completions. This information is not generally available from the country’s existing Education Management Information System on a timely basis, and must be collected separately, outside of Ministry of Education systems.
UNICEF is seeking a consultant to ensure that Country Offices’ education monitoring systems meet EAC’s six-monthly reporting requirements. This 11-month assignment will include: assessing Country Offices’ existing education monitoring systems; supporting the development of new monitoring systems where necessary; advising on the preparation of proposals for EAC co-funding; and documenting best practice and promising innovations in education monitoring systems, including integration with existing national systems.
Purpose
A consultant is required to:
1) Visit all UNICEF Country Offices that are currently running a program co-funded by EAC to assess whether their monitoring systems meet the requirement to provide six-monthly reports on the numbers of new enrolments, repeaters, grade promotions, and completions.
2) In programs that do not meet EAC reporting requirements, support the Country Office with the design, development, and implementation of new monitoring systems that will provide the necessary data.
3) Liaise with UNICEF Country Offices that are preparing proposals for EAC co-funding to ensure that the planned education monitoring system meets the reporting requirements.
4) Review and assess existing education monitoring systems, including those implemented by other organizations running programs co-funded by EAC; document best practice and promising innovations, including integration of monitoring systems with national systems; prepare an Options Paper for presentation at a meeting of Country Offices provisionally scheduled for the first quarter of 2016; and prepare a Final Report capturing lessons learned and recommendations for future work.
Duty Station
The consultant is expected to work remotely but to spend at least 5 days each in UNICEF’s New York Headquarters, the West and Central Africa Regional Office (WCARO) and the Eastern and Southern Africa Regional Office (ESARO) on dates to be agreed in order to attend meetings and events. The consultant is also expected to travel at least once to each relevant Country Office.
Timeframe
The consultant is required for a total of 220 days (equivalent to 11 months of full time work)
Start date: 31st August 2015 End date:29th July 2016, according to the following indicative breakdown:
*Please see breakdown in attached chart.
As a long term consultancy with on-going responsibilities throughout the consultancy timeframe, the consultant will be paid on a monthly basis on submission of the monthly report. Although the exact number of days worked in each month will be negotiable, it is expected that the consultant will work for around 22 days in each month.
Key competences, technical background, and experience required
Education:
· Advanced degree in education, monitoring & evaluation, or other relevant field.
· At least 8 years of senior level professional work experience at national or international level in education or a related field.
· At least 3 years of professional work experience in low-income countries.
· Demonstrated experience in the design, development and implementation of education monitoring systems or student tracking systems.
· Fluency in both English and French would be an advantage.
· Familiarity with new approaches to real-time monitoring using mobile technologies would be an advantage.
*Please see deliverables and deadlines in attached chart.
How to apply:
How to Apply
Applicants are requested to send their submissions to <**pdconsultants@unicef.org>** with subject line: “**Monitoring Education Systems, Consultancy**”by 11 August 2015, 5:00pm EST.
Applications must include:
- Cover letter,
- CV, and
- P11 form (http://www.unicef.org/about/employ/files/P11.doc)
- Indicate where you heard about this advertisement
Please indicate your ability, availability and daily/monthly rate (in US$) to undertake the terms of reference above. Applications submitted without a daily/monthly rate will not be considered.
NOTE: Files should not exceed 5.0MB limit
UNICEF is committed to achieving workforce diversity in terms of gender, nationality and culture. Individuals from minority groups, indigenous groups and persons with disabilities are equally encouraged to apply. All applications will be treated with the strictest confidence.
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