About Central Square Foundation (CSF)
Founded in 2012, Central Square Foundation is a non-profit philanthropic foundation working with the vision of ensuring quality school education for all children in India. CSF has a mission focused on ensuring high-quality foundational learning for all children in India. To achieve this, we partner with individuals and social impact organizations to bring innovative solutions in education to build the capacity of the government to drive systemic impact. To learn more about us and our work, visit www.centralsquarefoundation.org.
About the Research, Monitoring, Evaluation, Assessment and Learning (RMEAL) team
CSF’s endeavour is to transform the school education system in India and advance children’s learning outcomes, especially for those from vulnerable socio-economic backgrounds. The RMEAL practice undertakes a range of research and M&E activities to understand the ‘what works’ and ‘why it works’ elements of driving systems improvement and impact. Intending to generate evidence to strengthen education programs and policy, the team provides technical support to other verticals within CSF as well as oversight on third-party research studies.
CSF’s Research and M&E team is deeply engaged, advised, and mentored by renowned experts like Luis Crouch (Chief Technical Officer, RTI International), Ben Piper (Sr. Director, RTI International), Karthik Muralidharan (Chair, JPAL S.Asia), Asiya Kazmi (Global Education Policy Lead, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation). The Project Manager will join a high-caliber leadership team with collective experience working in both corporate and development sector organizations like BCG, IFMR, J-PAL, IGC, NITI Aayog, and National Skill Development Corporation.
Position Summary
The Senior Project Manager, RMEAL will serve as a critical enabler for all the team functions, and support the peers and senior members in operationalizing the team strategy. The person’s time will be mainly split between Edtech and School Governance portfolio of the RMEAL vertical, along with some portion of the Foundational Literacy and Numeracy (FLN) work. The key responsibilities are as follows:
Roles & Responsibilities
Research, Monitoring & Evaluation:
- Identifying and devising appropriate research designs - spanning quantitative, qualitative, process, and action research - taking into account the research objectives, as well as how to operationalize the research.
- Conceptualize and design monitoring frameworks (including tools and processes) that can be adopted by CSF verticals, partner organisations, and government bodies.
- Contributing to the execution of rigorous quantitative and qualitative evaluations to understand the impact of our programs on improving student learning and other pathways to change. Working on evaluation activities including devising Theories of Change, undertaking tool development, training for and management of data collection, and mixed-methods data analysis
- Undertake Data Analysis and Assimilation: Quantitative and qualitative data analysis, secondary research, synthesis of findings and insights, and report writing..
- Manage all aspects of the project independently, with light supervision of a senior manager.
Skills and Qualifications
- Minimum requirement of Bachelor’s degree in relevant fields, including economics, public/education policy or any related field with coursework on quantitative methods of research. A relevant Master’s degree would be preferable.
- 4-6 years of relevant professional experience in M&E / public policy research and analysis at an impact development consulting firm, think-tank, or implementing agency. Strong technical skills in quantitative research methods and data analysis, along with knowledge of social science statistics / econometrics is a must.
- Experience and fluency working with either Stata or R. Must be comfortable with Microsoft and Google Suite (MS Excel/PowerPoint, Google Sheets/Slides)
- Ability to understand complex research / data to draw actionable inference
- Working understanding of experimental and quasi experimental research designs (such as RCTs and Difference in Difference methodologies) is needed.
- Excellent people and project delivery skills, including the ability to manage multiple projects at a time and maturity to influence multiple internal and external stakeholders
- Must be willing to learn on the job and have demonstrable experience of learning new methodologies relevant to the work.
- Ability to work independently and proactively
- Prior understanding of and experience in education policy-making, and education-related studies especially in India, will be an advantage.
Desired Qualities
- A strong expertise and experience in experimental and quasi experimental research designs will be an added advantage.
- Knowledge and experience in qualitative methodologies (such as thematic coding) and prior experience in educational assessments, (psychometrics/Item Response Theory) will be an advantage.
- Working knowledge of data collection softwares (SurveyCTO, Tangerine) and qualitative software (NVivo, Dedoose) will be an advantage.
- Strong action-bias, influencing & and communication skills - the ability to synthesize technical insights into actionable steps
- Passion for making a scaled impact in education and belief in the possibility of foundational learning for all children
- Willingness to adapt to the dynamic nature of work and travel to project locations
Compensation
Remuneration will be competitive with Indian philanthropy pay scales and will depend upon the candidate’s experience levels.