Local Consultancy - Senior Expert for the Analysis of School Teacher Management System in Armenia

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.

For every child, a champion

Individual Consultant is expected to perform this assignment remotely (home-based) with possible field missions as required.

How can you make a difference?

The aim of the assignment is to support improvement of Armenia’s national teacher management system through comprehensive analysis and policy recommendations. Under this assignment, the Senior Expert, working within a team of dedicated experts composed of one Senior and three Junior Experts and guided by Team Leader, will be responsible for collecting the data and analyzing school teacher management practices to generate evidence-based policy recommendations for improvement of the teacher management system in Armenia. This assessment envisages both secondary review of existing data, desk-research and primary data collection/analysis.

These activities will contribute to the SDG (Sustainable Development Goal) Target 4.c. which requires states to “substantially increase the supply of qualified teachers, including through international cooperation for teacher training in developing countries.” At the global level, the agenda around the SDG 4 to ‘ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all’ by 2030, has reinforced a focus on learning assessment to gain data on learning that allow to establish and monitor education quality and learning progress.

The specific objectives under this assignment are:

1. to complete a robust and comprehensive literature review, followed by an overview of local legal framework and existing regulations, comprehensive desk-research and secondary analysis of existing raw data and relevant statistics that would serve as evidence in developing policy recommendations;
2. to design the methodology and the tools for data collection from the key stakeholders and beneficiaries, including local and regional actors, such as the education departments of regional authorities, current and prospective teachers, and other target groups;
3. to manage the quantitative data collection and quality control of survey among teachers through the National Center of Educational Technologies (NCET) of the Ministry of Education, Science, Culture and Sports of Armenia (MESCS) with the purpose of exploring the current state, issues and outcomes of teacher management policies;
4. to collect and analyze the qualitative data from in-service and pre-service teachers through close collaboration with UNICEF and MESCS.

The analysis shall seek to explore:

1. To what extent Armenia’s strategies (policies) for recruiting and inducting appropriate teaching staff is comprehensive and well-justified including in reference to advanced international theory and practice.
2. To what extent Armenia’s existing policies for teacher retention ensure effective, favourable and supportive working conditions including in reference to advanced international theory and practice
3. To what extent Armenia’s teacher continuous professional development (CPD) policies meet core principles of effective CPD in reference to advanced international theory and practice.

Key stakeholders of the assignment are the government line ministries, namely the Ministries of Territorial Administration and Infrastructure (MoTAI), MESCS, sub-national and local authorities, UNICEF, EU and dedicated CSOs.

The knowledge generated by the study should be used by UNICEF Armenia to inform and amplify its future activities and projects in the country and will also be used by other national stakeholders to further refine the quality, cohesiveness and timeliness of policies in the field of general education.

Tasks/Milestone:

Deliverables/Outputs:

Timeline

Inception Phase

- Support in desk researching and secondary review of data;

- Support the Team Leader to develop the Study Protocol, with basic literature review, detailed methodology, instruments, sampling and recruitment of participants, fieldwork approach and quality control mechanism for on-line survey and qualitative interviews;

- Adjustments of the methodology as per guidance and comments from UNICEF.

Study Protocol for the inception phase and fieldwork plan in English with detailed implementation plan and methodology including but not limited to: (i) list of management practices and processes to be analysed; (ii) mapping of stakeholders and documents; (iii) implementation plan, (iv) charter of risks and mitigation strategies; (v) list of contextualized OECD TALIS-based dimension descriptions, etc.

Mid-June, 2021

Fieldwork Phase

- Ensure pretesting and finalization of the instruments based on the methodology developed by the study team;

- Comprehensive literature review;

- Cleaning and comprehensive analysis of the quantitative data provided by the NCET;

- Collecting qualitative data through qualitative interviews;

- Data cleaning and initial processing;

- Elaboration of transcripts and short summaries;

- Submission of data collection report covering the following pieces: documentation of fieldwork implementation, quality control, final instruments, and datasets.

- Debriefing meeting for UNICEF Armenia on the preliminary findings, testing elements of conclusions.

Comprehensive literature review in Armenian and English (no more than 20 pages)

Brief report and validation workshop on desk review and secondary data

Documentation of fieldwork implementation, including the datasets and full transcripts/audio-files of in-depth interviews

End of September, 2021

Analysis and Reporting

- Data further processing and analytics;

- Inputs in development of the draft report for UNICEF Armenia review providing data visualization. The contents of the report should be developed based on feedback provided after testing and analysis phase of the assignment.

- Support in the development of the final report.

Draft reports in English and Armenian

Final reports in English and Armenian with recommendations (up to 50 pages, excluding annexes) and an Executive Summary

Mid-November, 2021

Early December, 2021

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

• Advanced university degree (Masters) in Education, Sociology, Economics, Public Policy, Social Policy or a related field. A PhD degree would be a strong asset.
• At least 4 years of documented experience in education (preferably at least 2 years in either research or development of principal or teacher education programmes/policies); with solid knowledge of international research practice in the field of early school leadership; as well as of Armenia’s national school leadership system.
• Extensive experience in designing research projects, studies, evaluations and surveys, data analysis and report writing (both in Armenian and in English; links to published research and analytical documents relevant to the TOR to be provided).
• No less than 5 years’ experience in qualitative interviewing.
• Data management and processing skills through application of SPSS, STATA or other relevant packages.
• Proven ability of working in teams and expert groups as well as of working in international and multicultural environments.
• Very good communication and presentation skills with government and international organizations.
• Fluency in written and spoken English.
• Previous experience in working with UN agencies will be an asset.

For more details please refer to the attached Terms of Reference. Terms of Reference (B3_Senior Expert) re-post.pdf

Terms of the application:

The deadline for the submission of applications is June 14. Applications should include:

• Cover letter;
• CV;
• Financial Proposal;
• Published research and analytical documents relevant to the TOR;
• Examples of published work (paper, abstract, proceedings) in top international conferences and SCOPUS-indexed high-quality journals will be an asset.

For every Child, you demonstrate…

UNICEF's values of Care, Respect, Integrity, Trust, and Accountability (CRITA) and core competencies in Communication, Working with People and Drive for Results.

To view our competency framework, please visit here.

Click here to learn more about UNICEF’s values and competencies.

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.