MLE Associate at Teaching at the Right Level Africa

Design and ensure robust delivery of measurement, monitoring, and review (MMR) plans for 2-4 country programs: MMR at TaRL Africa means setting up tools and processes to generate quality program data through the government systems and empowering implementation teams to review and use data to better support the programs.

• Understand the program objectives and different stakeholder needs to support the country MLE associates and partners in designing tools/ processes for data collection, quality assurance, mentoring, and review.
• Develop a strong understanding of governments’ existing MMR systems to ensure that TaRL data systems are well embedded into the government systems.
• Directly train the government and partner teams on assessments, data collection, and use.
• Directly analyze or support country teams and partners in analyzing program data and sharing key insights with government stakeholders and partners on the successes, challenges, lessons, and next steps.
• Establish and maintain a feedback loop to ensure that insights from data analysis are effectively integrated into program improvements and decision-making processes.
• Regularly assess the technical capacity of country/ partner teams and conduct workshops on data understanding and use as necessary.

Support data collection, analysis, reporting, and dissemination:

• Regularly visit the program schools across countries directly supporting, interact with the implementation teams, and document the field observations and feed into program reviews and strengthening.
• Regularly synthesize knowledge and multi-cycle data from different contexts and present to the TaRL Africa teams.
• Promote the sharing of program best practices through formal and informal workshops for the implementation teams.

Support scoping, designing, and testing nimble learning / deep-dive study ideas: TaRL Africa believes in adaptive learning and improvement of programs in the pursuit of making the TaRL programs more effective and owned by governments. In addition to rigorous research and evaluations to build on the already strong evidence for TaRL, we regularly conduct such nimble learning studies (quickly executed, typically within a quarter) to better unpack program challenges and identify ways to strengthen.

• Support the design of pilot assessment and monitoring systems.
• Support pilot implementation including training of stakeholders.
• Provide contextual knowledge, make field plans to implement learning activities on the ground.
• Train and supervise country teams/ enumerators on data collection.
• Monitor pilot process and providing periodic reports.
• Analyze, report, and disseminate pilot outcomes and implications/ recommendations to government, partners, and internal teams.

Miscellaneous

• Support rigorous research activities as needed, including literature reviews, providing contextual knowledge for questionnaire design and analysis.
• Creatively communicate program lessons and results with the TaRL community and more broadly (e.g., through blogs, articles, podcasts, newsletters).
• Keep abreast of government policies, recent initiatives / programs in the countries directly supporting.
• Support other tasks as assigned by the line manager.

Education and Qualifications

• Minimum qualification: A Bachelor degree and 3 years of work experience or a Master's degree and 2 years of work experience as an analyst or similar positions with an analytical bent. Applicants from for-profit/ consulting backgrounds looking to switch to the social sector to create impact are also welcome to apply.
• Excellent data analysis skills.
• Ability to think analytically and critically, keeping the big picture in mind and remaining curious.
• Experience working with data manipulation software, including data collection, analysis & visualization platforms (Required: Excel, SurveyCTO/ ODK/ Kobo Collect; Strongly preferred: Tableau/Power BI, Stata).
• Excellent communication skills in English, including writing, conversing, and presenting.
• Self-starter with an attitude to get the job done.
• Strong interpersonal skills and experience working with cross-cultural teams.
• Passionate about improving children’s learning through data and evidence.
• Ability to manage multiple projects simultaneously.
• Willingness to travel frequently and flexibly within Africa, especially in remote rural areas.