International Consultant (Education); Dhaka; Bangladesh
This opening expired 2 years ago.
Do not try to apply for this job.
Contract
This is a Consultancy contract. More about Consultancy contracts.
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.
Background:
The education system in Bangladesh observed one of the longest school closures in the world, lasting for more than one
and a half -years, from 17 March 2020 to 11 September 2021, impacting an estimated 42 million students from pre-primary to tertiary levels. With the support of UNICEF and other Development Partners (DPs), the Government of Bangladesh quickly established a remote learning system to ensure learning continuity, with lessons broadcast on television and radio, e-contents uploaded, and live classes conducted by teachers on online platforms. Despite these initiatives, there is a high risk of substantial losses in learning and increasing drop-out rates, particularly in the rural and remote areas, as not all children could be reached equitably by remote learning due to access to devices and connectivity. Analysis of past experiences of school closure confirm substantial reductions in foundational skills and basic competencies among children, ranging from 11 to 54 per cent. Recent projection of COVID-19 impact on learning also confirms that without mitigation, children could lose more than a full year’s worth of learning from a three-month school closure as they will be behind the curriculum when they re-enter school and will fall further behind as time goes on. School closure in Bangladesh is projected to have caused learning loss, at a minimum, of 19 per cent in primary and 25 per cent in secondary level, translating into 3.42 million primary students and 2.50 million secondary students – a total of 5.92 million school children at serious learning loss risk.
Marginalized children have been disproportionately affected by the negative impact of COVID-19 due to their pre-existing
vulnerability and multiple deprivations. Girls’ education is significantly affected by the COVID-19 as girls are likely to do more household work and risk being subjected to violence, sexual exploitation, and abuse, without access to psychosocial support. Children with disabilities are facing challenges with access to therapy and rehabilitation services, lack of required care and attention to their special needs[1], non-accessible forms of remote learning[2] and are more likely to have underlying health conditions which put them at increased risk of complications from COVID-19[3]. Children from lower-income families are at risk of being malnourished due to meagre family income and missing school.[4] Many children, particularly girls, may not return to school[5] as families are resorting to negative coping mechanisms to manage economic hardships, including child marriage and child labour. These children also have increased vulnerability to domestic violence, child abuse and toxic stress, lack of parental supervision for children with working parents, and increased vulnerability of online sexual exploitation. The stress and trauma caused by unprecedented uncertainty due to the pandemic are likely to affect the mental health of students, parents and teachers and may cause psychosocial issues during and post-pandemic periods.
After reopening, the poor conditions are chaotic and there is a lot of pressure on the education systems to adhere to the
National Task Force SoPs designed to prevent and manage the COVID-19 pandemic.
To address these issues, UNICEF has mobilised funds from donors to address these multiple needs for vulnerable children who have been affected by the COVID-19 through Technical assistance to the Ministries of Education, service delivery for the most marginalised children, and providing a covid-19 response relief for the most deprived children. Specifically:
The Education Quality Improvement Programme (EQUIP-B) Technical assistance programme will improve equitable access to quality education for all children including girls and children with disabilities and will focus on mainstreaming gender and inclusion of children with disabilities and other vulnerable children such as those affected by the climate change, increasing community awareness and engagement, and enhancing EMIS and data/evidence generation systems.
The Educate the most disadvantaged children (EMDC) Service delivery grant will address the most pressing needs of
marginalised children, and to provide improved access to education services for out-of-school children will focus on the most deprived children to increase their opportunities for education and gain associated personal learning, health and social benefits.The Support for the COVID-19 Response and Recovery in Education for Children and Adolescents in Bangladesh will focus on creating a resilient, shock-responsive education system that offers equitable and quality primary and secondary education services by maintaining safe operations at schools, strengthening remote learning modalities, establishing an effective blended learning strategy, recovering the lost learning through supportive remediation and accelerated learning programmes and further strengthening the Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR)/Education in Emergency (EiE) framework components of the system.
All elements described above are interlinked and require coherent and focused coordination, monitoring and reporting, for which the education section proposes to recruit a dedicated consultant, to provide technical support, and play a critical role in coordination and collaboration for the education programme.
Purpose of Activity/Assignment:
In line with the above, UNICEF seeks a consultant to:
- Provide key strategic support to the EQUIP-B Technical Assistance to improve equitable access to quality education for all children including girls and children with disabilities; EMDC for Service delivery to address the most pressing needs of marginalised children, and to provide improved access to education services for out-of-school children, and support for the COVID-19 Response and Recovery in Education for Children and Adolescents in Bangladesh
- Coordinate sectoral frameworks and Blended Education working groups jointly with the Chief of Education, for the Education Development Partners (EDP) and the Development Partners Consortium (DPC).
- Support the planning and monitoring of the EQUIP-B, EMDC and the COVID-19 grant in line with the Program Strategy Notes for education, PEDP4, SEDP and Humanitarian Appeal for Children (HAC).
Major Tasks
Deliverables
Time Fram
- Provide a micro-plan for the implementation of critical areas in 2022/23 an annual plan linked to EQUIP-B, EMDC and GAC in the PSN for Education of the new CPD, and the RWP for 2022- 2026
• Work plan, documentation of work planning.
• Political economy analysis Outline Report.
• Progress monitoring and report
April 2022
- Support children who dropped out of primary education due to COVID-19 to catch up with their learning.
- Provide an approach for delivering a girl-friendly inclusive education model for implementation in selected schools.
• Engagement strategy and action plan.
• Assess Report of the impact of COVID on girls, children with disabilities
•Technical note and adaptation guidelines for curriculum adjustments for children with disabilities
• Monthly monitoring and progress report.
May 2022
- Safe operation of schools is ensured.
• Technical support for Assistive devices design piloting
• Report on the schools receiving hygiene supplies, activated C2C platforms
• Report on the risks and vulnerability assessment.
• Assessment Report for the E-monitoring system design for secondary education.
• Monthly monitoring and progress report.
June 2022
- Improved institutional set-up at the national level facilitates better community engagement and social mobilization.
• Consolidate inputs from the national consultant for community engagement and social mobilization work.
• Capacity assessments of institutional set-up Report identifying bottlenecks and capacity gaps
• Monthly monitoring and progress report.
July 2022
- Support children who never enrolled, dropped out from primary and/or facing barriers and challenges in accessing formal education to complete the primary cycle with foundational skills and nationally defined competencies.
• Community engagement strategy and action plan
• Rollout community engagement action plan
• Revise the plan addressing emerging issues
• Monthly monitoring and progress report.
August 2022
- Support BNFE to develop a long-term strategy and enhanced capacity to coordinate and deliver NFE and lifelong learning, especially for the most marginalized.
- Learning loss is effectively addressed and recovered.
• Strategy and operational plan.
• Roll out of technical assistance plan.
• Review and evaluation of the technical assistance.
• Prepare an analysis and Report of dropout survey and learning loss rates
• Prepare an analysis of the study assessing the impacts of COVID-19 on the most marginalized children.
• Monthly monitoring and progress report.
September 2022
- Written technical inputs on EQUIP-B, EMDC and GAC provided for UNICEF project teams.
• Written inputs and documentation of support as required
• Monthly monitoring and progress report.
October 2022
- Learning loss is effectively addressed and recovered.
• Report on the advocacy events and remediation package distributed
• Monthly monitoring and progress report.
November 2022
- Uninterrupted continuity of learning is ensured.
• Report on the Blended Education Master plan application for the Education RWP.
• Piloting report for high tech, low-tech, and no tec versus affordable low-tech remote learning solutions piloted.
• Monthly monitoring and progress report.
December 2022
- Uninterrupted continuity of learning is ensured.
• Report for the comprehensive blended learning and monitoring framework, catch up and institutional arrangement.
• Report of the model and handover to government for mainstreaming
• Monthly monitoring and progress report.
January 2023
- Uninterrupted continuity of learning is ensured.
• Report on the impact of the policymakers/ practitioners trained on blended learning approach
• Evaluation Report of the project approach.
• Report for a monitoring mechanism for tracking participation in distance learning modalities (U-Report and Rapid Pro)
•Monthly monitoring and progress report.
February 2023
- Evidence and lessons learnt documented and disseminated to strengthen models and innovative solutions to mitigate the challenges.
• Dissemination Report of the advocacy event and catch-up and accelerated NFPE programme.
• Dissemination, networking, and advocacy event Report.
• Consolidated Report for the Consultancy.
15 March 2023
Minimum Qualifications/ Knowledge/Expertise/Skills required:
- Advanced University degree in Social sciences, International Relations, Economics, international development, Education, or related fields.
- A minimum of 5 years of relevant work experience.
- Extensive knowledge and skills of education and social sectors in a developing country context.
- High analytical skills using diverse and complex quantitative and qualitative data from a wide range of sources.
- Demonstrates, applies, and shares technical knowledge.
- Extensive experience in multi-sectoral collaboration and stakeholder coordination in education
- Proven experience in drafting and developing multi-stakeholder planning documents
- Fluent in English (spoken and written)
[1] Perspectives on the Impact of COVID-19 on Young Children and Early Childhood Development in the Asia-Pacific Region, ARNEC. 2020.
[2] Joint Appeal to protect people with disabilities from the negative impact of COVID-19, Bangladesh Disability Alliance on SDGs, 2020
[3] COVID-19 Response and recovery Plan: Education sector, MoPME. 2020
[4] ARNEC 2020, UNICEF 2020
[5] UNESCO, World Bank, and UNICEF (2021) Mission: Recovering Education in 2021
For every Child, you demonstrate…
UNICEF's values of Care, Respect, Integrity, Trust, and Accountability (CRITA).
To view our competency framework, please visit here.
UNICEF is committed to diversity and inclusion within its workforce, and encourages all candidates, irrespective of gender, nationality, religious and ethnic backgrounds, including persons living with disabilities, to apply to become a part of the organization.
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:
Mobility is a condition of international professional employment with UNICEF and an underlying premise of the international civil service.
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.
Added 2 years ago
-
Updated 2 years ago
-
Source:
unicef.org
