Consultancy: Evaluation of UNICEF Contributions to the Reduction of Out-of-School Children and Improving Access to Multiple and Flexible Pathways to Learning, Team Member, 9 months, Evaluati

Contract

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UNICEF works in some of the world’s toughest places, to reach the world’s most disadvantaged children. To save their lives. To defend their rights. To help them fulfill their potential.

Across 190 countries and territories, we work for every child, everywhere, every day, to build a better world for everyone.

And we never give up.

For every child, evaluate

The UNICEF Evaluation Office (EO) assumes global leadership and oversight for the evaluation function. The office is accountable for developing an agenda and work plan to evaluate UNICEF programmes and processes. It conducts and manages independent corporate evaluations and evaluation syntheses, provides technical assistance and quality assurance for evaluations commissioned at the decentralized level (country and regional offices) and develops evaluation methods.

Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the estimated number of school-aged out-of-school children and adolescents at primary and secondary levels stood at approximately 258 million. The COVID-19 pandemic and its prolonged school closures have posed challenges to the progress made in reducing the prevalence of out-of-school children and adolescents and increasing access to multiple and flexible pathways to learning and skills development over the past decades. By 2020, an additional 24 million children were projected to be at risk of not returning to school.

Equitable access to learning opportunities is one of UNICEF strategic priorities, described in the organization’s Strategic Plans (2018-2021 and 2022-2025) and 2019-2030 Education Strategy. Since 2010, the organization has been supporting out-of-school children and adolescents through its participation in the Global Initiative for Out-of-School Children. UNICEF is currently rolling out the Multiple and Flexible Pathways Initiative. This initiative is being guided by the 2020 Secondary Education Guidance: Multiple and Flexible Pathway and the 2015 and 2023 Out-of-School Children Initiative operational manuals. The evaluation aims at generating evidence to assess the organization’s work supporting out-of-school children and adolescents (for accountability and learning purposes) as well as to evaluate prior and ongoing work supporting multiple and flexible pathways to learning (with a forward-looking learning purpose).

How can you make a difference?

The overall purpose is twofold: to enhance organizational learning and to strengthen organizational accountability. A specific purpose of this evaluation is to better position UNICEF to

contribute to enhancing children’s and adolescents’ access to quality education, including multiple and flexible pathways to learning and skills development for those at risk of dropping out and those out of school. Ultimately, this exercise aims to improve the overall well-being and equitable chances in life for all children and adolescents through learning or skills development, contributing to the achievement of SDG 4. Towards this end, the evidence generated by the evaluation will enable UNICEF:

• To ensure that the organization’s efforts have reduced school dropout and improve school retention for in-school children and adolescents at risk of dropping out of school.
• To enhance the organization’s capacity to adjust, accelerate, and to scale-up its efforts to increase access to multiple and flexible pathways for learning and skills development, meeting the specific needs of different profiles of out-of-school children and adolescents.
• To better advocate and technically advise government partners on policy reforms, public budgeting, and financing strategies to increase access to multiple and flexible pathways to learning and skills development.

The overall objective of this evaluation is to assess UNICEF work in support of addressing the issues as they relate to in-school children and adolescents at risk of dropping out of school and out-of-school children and adolescents. The evaluation aims to evaluate the extent to which UNICEF efforts have made a difference in supporting the school retention and the transition into higher formal education levels of in-school children and adolescents at risk of dropping out; facilitating the return to formal education of out-of-school children and adolescents; and increasing the access to multiple and flexible pathways to learning and skills development. This exercise has three specific objectives, namely:

• Objective 1. Assess UNICEF work reducing school dropout and improving school retention of in-school children and adolescents at risk of dropping out.
• Objective 2. Evaluate UNICEF capacity to adapt, accelerate, and scale-up its efforts to increase access to multiple and flexible pathways to learning and skills development, meeting the specific needs of different profiles of out-of-school children and adolescents.
• Objective 3. Investigate UNICEF work to support policy reforms, public budgeting, and financing strategies to expand access to equitable and inclusive multiple and flexible pathways to learning and skills development.

Deliverable 1 : Inception Report: September 2023 (20 per cent payment)

Deliverable 2 : Final Draft Global Evaluation Report: December 2023 (30 per cent payment)

Deliverable 3 : Global Evaluation Report : February 2024 (30 per cent payment)

Deliverable 4 : Policy Briefs and Good Practice Notes: March 2024 (20 per cent payment)

Home-based with travel and/or reporting to UNICEF New York. Travel to selected countries is expected.

ToR Evaluation of UNICEF Work on Out of School Children and Pathways to Learning -TM.pdf

To qualify as an advocate for every child you will have…

Team Member: Expected responsibilities

• Providing overall support to the team leader to ensure timely completion of all tasks; submission of all deliverables; and ensuring high quality of all products as defined in the agreed work plan schedule.
• Giving expert thematic and technical support to the team leader providing substantive feedback on thematic and data analyses.
• Making substantial contributions to compiling, cleaning, and processing quantitative and qualitative data, as well as analyzing and populating the evidence matrix.
• Supporting the team leader with primary data collection (e.g., key informant interviews, focus group, survey design, observational methods), analytical tasks, and reporting as defined and agreed upon with the team leader and EO evaluation manager, based on each team members’ roles and responsibilities.

Key qualification

• Minimum of five years of professional experience in evaluations exercises.
• Thematic expertise on out-of-school children and adolescents and multiple and flexible pathways to learning and skills development.
• Experience with mixed-method evaluation approaches, including survey design, quantitative data analyses, as well as primary qualitative data collection through key informant interviews, focus group discussions, and observational methods.
• Advanced degree (master’s or higher) in a relevant field of social sciences, with an advantage for degrees or major emphases in evaluation or related evidence fields.
• Experience with evaluation exercises within the UN system.
• Ability to independently support or lead one or more elements of the evaluation, complementing the strengths of the team leader.

How to Apply:

• Consultants who wish to submit applications as individual contributors for a specific role must clearly indicate in their application the position they wish to apply for. Interested parties are encouraged to submit applications as teams.
• All interested parties, whether applying as a team or as individual contributors, should submit a letter of interest and resume(s), as well as examples of relevant evaluation reports or study reports, clarifying their role and contribution to the evaluation as they relate to out-of-school children and adolescents and multiple and flexible pathways to learning.
• For those applying as teams, ALL TEAM MEMBERS MUST APPLY SEPARATELY for the specific advertisement that relate to their role. In addition, all team members must indicate in their cover letters that they are part of a specific team, including the names of other team members.

• All applicants must submit a work plan proposal, as per table below:

  Number of days

Daily fee

Total fees

Deliverable 1: Inception report

Deliverable 2: First drafts of global evaluation report, policy briefs, good practice notes

Deliverable 3: Final global evaluation report

Deliverable 4: Final policy briefs, good practice notes.

For every Child, you demonstrate…

UNICEF is here to serve the world’s most disadvantaged children and our global workforce must reflect the diversity of those children. The UNICEF family is committed to include everyone, irrespective of their race/ethnicity, age, disability, gender identity, sexual orientation, religion, nationality, socio-economic background, or any other personal characteristic.

UNICEF offers reasonable accommodation for consultants/individual contractors with disabilities. This may include, for example, accessible software, travel assistance for missions or personal attendants. We encourage you to disclose your disability during your application in case you need reasonable accommodation during the selection process and afterwards in your assignment.

UNICEF has a zero-tolerance policy on conduct that is incompatible with the aims and objectives of the United Nations and UNICEF, including sexual exploitation and abuse, sexual harassment, abuse of authority and discrimination. UNICEF also adheres to strict child safeguarding principles. All selected candidates will be expected to adhere to these standards and principles and will therefore undergo rigorous reference and background checks. Background checks will include the verification of academic credential(s) and employment history. Selected candidates may be required to provide additional information to conduct a background check.

Remarks:

Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted and advance to the next stage of the selection process.

Individuals engaged under a consultancy or individual contract will not be considered “staff members” under the Staff Regulations and Rules of the United Nations and UNICEF’s policies and procedures, and will not be entitled to benefits provided therein (such as leave entitlements and medical insurance coverage). Their conditions of service will be governed by their contract and the General Conditions of Contracts for the Services of Consultants and Individual Contractors. Consultants and individual contractors are responsible for determining their tax liabilities and for the payment of any taxes and/or duties, in accordance with local or other applicable laws.

The selected candidate is solely responsible to ensure that the visa (applicable) and health insurance required to perform the duties of the contract are valid for the entire period of the contract. Selected candidates are subject to confirmation of fully-vaccinated status against SARS-CoV-2 (Covid-19) with a World Health Organization (WHO)-endorsed vaccine, which must be met prior to taking up the assignment. It does not apply to consultants who will work remotely and are not expected to work on or visit UNICEF premises, programme delivery locations or directly interact with communities UNICEF works with, nor to travel to perform functions for UNICEF for the duration of their consultancy contracts.