Project Manager, Assessments

Job Title: Project Manager, Assessments

Organization: Central Square Foundation

Team: Schools Governance

Location: Udaipur, Rajasthan

About Central Square Foundation:

Founded in 2012, Central Square Foundation (CSF) is a non-profit philanthropic foundation working on the vision of ensuring quality school education for all children in India. We are driven by our mission to transform the school education system with a focus on improving children's learning outcomes, especially in low-income communities.

(Learn more about CSF on our website)

About the team:

The Schools Governance team at Central Square Foundation envisions a transformed school education delivery system which is principally accountable and transparent about its learning outcomes. It targets measuring and publicizing the achievement of learning outcomes in public and private schools, and the establishment of a State Schools Standards Authority for schools based on the achievement of these outcomes.

In the current educational landscape, despite extensive efforts to increase access to education, learning outcomes have remained alarmingly stagnant. Major government initiatives have primarily focused on expanding access and providing inputs, but not on better educational outcomes. This absence of outcomes oriented governance is aggravated by a regulatory system where the government both runs its schools and regulates them. Further, there is no way to reliably measure the learning quality of schools, making it difficult to hold them accountable for results.

CSF Schools Governance team acknowledges the pressing need for a systemic reform in education, which can be solved with a two-fold approach. The states need to: -

1. Establish a robust and reliable learning outcome indicator assessing student competencies, in the form of a competency-based census assessment (CCA), with public disclosure of school data, but anonymised student data. This will transparently show every school’s quality and nudge them to make the necessary improvements.
2. Create an independent regulatory body, the State School Standards Authority (SSSA), which will operate outside the current department of school education to focus specially on school regulation, and demand accountability from all schools — government or private.

Position Summary

CSF is looking for a Project Manager, Assessments, based out of Udaipur, Rajasthan to build the state’s SCERT’s capacity in developing high-quality competency-based census assessments (CCA). The work will revolve around strengthening their processes for creating questions, blueprints and sample papers for primary and upper primary grade levels, and the development of the state's curriculum framework. The fulfillment of the responsibilities will require effective coordination with other bodies of state’s education department (the Directorate, the Board, etc.). It is a full-time role and the Project Manager would report to the Project Lead of the state CSF team.

Key Responsibilities

• Conduct capacity-building workshops to ensure smooth functioning of, and delivery by, the Assessment Cell of Rajasthan’s SCERT
• Set up project management processes and guidelines and ensure that all activities are driving towards the defined goals
• Carry out relevant preliminary research as and when required
• Train the concerned personnel on using basic technology and improve their creation and review processes
• Curate and/or develop technology for various workstreams of the program and facilitate their smooth rollout in coordination with the concerned departments
• Develop and manage strong working relationships with government stakeholders at the state and district levels
• Work with expert teams at CSF on the assigned work streams to contextualize the same for the state
• Knowledge management and documentation of the implementation of work in the state

Required Qualifications, Skills, and Abilities

• Bachelor’s degree from a reputed university; a Master’s degree preferred (in education, development studies, public policy, and social sciences) 
• 1.5 to 4 years (for Project Manager) of work experience, preferably in the education sector demonstrating a knowledge of curriculum development, assessment and/or content creation
• Keen interest in the Development/Education sector
• Fluent in English and Hindi with excellent reading and writing skills. Preference will be given to candidates who know the local language well.
• An experience in handling large data and analysis (using spreadsheets or SQL) preferred
• Past experience working with state and district-level governance and institutional structures is preferred
• Knowledge and experience working on project management, large-scale program implementation with multiple delivery tracks, and researching and monitoring among others
• Strong stakeholder management, problem-solving, and analytical skills