Makani programme education support Senior Officer

Contract

This is a LICA Specialist-9 contract. This kind of contract is known as Local Individual Contractor Agreements. It is normally only for nationals. It's an external contract. It usually requires 2 years of experience, depending on education. More about LICA Specialist-9 contracts.

Background Information - UNOPS

UNOPS is an operational arm of the United Nations, supporting the successful implementation of its partners’ peacebuilding, humanitarian and development projects around the world. Our mission is to help people build better lives and countries achieve sustainable development.

UNOPS areas of expertise cover infrastructure, procurement, project management, financial management and human resources.

Working with us

UNOPS offers short- and long-term work opportunities in diverse and challenging environments across the globe. We are looking for creative, results-focused professionals with skills in a range of disciplines.

Diversity

With over 4,000 UNOPS personnel and approximately 7,000 personnel recruited on behalf of UNOPS partners spread across 80 countries, our workforce represents a wide range of nationalities and cultures. We promote a balanced, diverse workforce — a strength that helps us better understand and address our partners’ needs, and continually strive to improve our gender balance through initiatives and policies that encourage recruitment of qualified female candidates.

Work life harmonization

UNOPS values its people and recognizes the importance of balancing professional and personal demands.

Background Information - Job-specific

Jordan is home to 10.7 million people, where forty per cent of the population is under 18, 20 percent between age 15-24 years, 63 per cent under 30 years and 62 per cent in the productive age between 15 to 64 years (Census 2015). Jordan is facing an unprecedented increase in the unemployment rates since 2014, with significantly higher rates for the young and female labour force. The unemployment rate during the COVID-19 lockdown has increased to 23 percent in Q2 2020, representing an increase of 3.7 percentage point from Q1 of 2020, where the high unemployment rate is recorded for youth: 57.7% for 15-17 years old and 42.2% for 20-24 years old.

Jordan also hosts more than 2.8 million registered refugees, which is the second-largest refugee population in the world, and the majority of them live below the national poverty line With the Syrian crisis in its tenth year in 2020, approximately 657,756 Syrian refugees are registered in Jordan as of August 2020, with an overwhelming majority (estimated 80%) living out of camps. However, the number of Syrians in Jordan, including those unregistered, is estimated to be more than 1 million. Jordan is also home to 67,000 Iraqi refugees, 6,000 Sudanese, and nearly 20,000 Pakistanis and 2,500 from other countries.

Vulnerable children and youth in the country are in continuous need of learning support services, skills building training, psychosocial support, and case management services to address their needs. The children residing in vulnerable communities are at heightened risks of early marriage, child labour, gender-based violence, and other exploitation and abuse. Without education, protection, and support, vulnerable children and young people are at risk of losing hope, of accepting violence as normal and replicating it; undermining their own futures, the future of their nations, and the stability of the region. In short, an entire generation is at risk of being lost.

Although the Government of Jordan has provided access to schools for Syrian refugees to the extent possible, still 36 percent of Syrian children are out of school, UNICEF continues to scale up an alternative, innovative approach to expanding learning opportunities to realize out-of-school children's right to access education.

In order to provide the comprehensive provision of services to all vulnerable refugee and Jordanian Children, UNICEF Jordan launched the Makani (My Space) approach in 2015, linking interventions in child protection – psychosocial support services; education – learning support services ; adolescent and youth participation – skills building and innovations labs; as well as providing Early Childhood Development services. The Makani centres offer a comprehensive and multi-sectoral approach to service provision for children and young people (0-18 years old), girls and boys, families and community members. The Makani programme aims to promote and address children and young people's full development and well-being – physical, cognitive, social and emotional – helping them shape their futures. Each Makani centre has a community outreach component as well as referral mechanisms systems. Makani centres are operated by UNICEF – in refugees camps-, Ministry of Social Development, non-governmental and community-based organizations across the country, whose staff receive a range of training necessary to deliver these integrated services. In early 2019 Makani services went into a programmatic shift where UNICEF merged the Child protection components and life skills with learning support services to assure higher impact and increase cost efficiency.

A decision was made in UNICEF 2020 that the Learning Support Services (LSS) in the Makani centres should be aligned more closely with the needs of students. As part of that refresh the issue of low achievement in reading will be addressed through a competency based reading recovery programme and grade level based mathematics and Arabic literacy will be addressed by building on MOE identified critical concepts in these subjects and providing an engaging cross curricular approach through use of humanities and arts integrating life skills and values based education.

Programme 1: The Reading Recovery Programme (will be implemented based on student competencies)

According to the world bank report 52 percent of elementary students in Jordan suffer from “learning poverty”. The WB defined learning poverty based on the percentage of 10-year-olds who cannot read or understand a simple story. Throughout the implementation of the Maknai programme reading was reported as one of the challenges facing children in Jordan. UNICEF anticipates that school closures will further increase the learning poverty in Jordan especially for vulnerable children.

It is widely accepted that poverty and limited functional literacy reinforce each other. As the World Bank (2019) pointed out, shortcomings in the education system resulting in low literacy levels contribute to poor economic outcomes. Conversely, pupils from deprived backgrounds experience less educational success. Studies have found that children with limited access to books and other texts, without a quiet space in which to read and with little support from adults or other young people, fall behind in their literacy development.

And when children cannot read, their achievement in other curriculum areas is severely restricted. Reading is a complex process involving phonological understanding, letter recognition, word meanings and grammatical knowledge. Developments in neuroscience suggest that the changes in the brain which result from learning to read lead to improvements in other aspects of education.

Interrupted schooling can also have a detrimental effect on reading levels. The World Economic Forum (2020) noted that over half the world's children were lacking basic learning skills and calculated that the Covid pandemic had added 10% to this estimate. Confirming this trend, a US study of 'summer slip' suggested that children from deprived backgrounds could fall behind by up to 20% in their grade scores.

In high income counties, reading recovery programmes have been used for many years to support children who failed to learn to read often due to learning or other difficulties. Reading recovery programmes are intensive, providing high quality instruction for individual children.

Children in Jordan would benefit from the reading recovery method, but it does not need to be at the same level of intensity. It is more likely that missed and poor schooling, combined with school closures due to COVID-19 has resulted in children of all ages and reading abilities failing to read at expected grade levels. Without a reading intervention, many children may never reach the fluency required to be successful in school or to earn adequately from employment in their future.

In 2021 UNICEF contracted an international company to lead on the development of the Reading Recovery programme, The objective of the reading recovery service is to support UNICEF JCO to develop one aspect of the Learning Support Services. UNICEF JCO is ambitious and wants a programme that will ensure all children who are below expected grade level in reading will be supported to make rapid progress.

Programme 2: Cross-curricular maths and Arabic language programme for grades 1 to 9

There is a strong justification for refreshing the Learning Support Services (LSS) in the Makani centres to align them more closely with the needs of students in 2021 and onwards and to address the specific needs of these students over the next five years. Originally LSS was set up for out of school refugee students from Syria. Over time school enrolment has become more successful and now most children attending LSS sessions are in schools. Consequently, the curriculum content, the delivery system within the Makani centres of academic and wrap-around support and the pedagogy used to deliver sessions all need to be revised. At the start of the Syria crisis Makani programme focus was on enrolling out of school children in short LSS cycles before referring them to public school. Over the years Makani centres focus shifted from school referral and enrolment to retention. LSS therefore changed to a retention strategy for vulnerable in-school children.

The onset of COVID-19 has impacted education access and learning for children in Jordan. Since 15 March 2020, all schools, kindergartens and universities (private and public) have been closed, affecting more than 2.3 million learners. The MOE has broadcast televised lessons nationally and established digital platforms to facilitate children’s access to educational content and a learning management system. In addition, the MOE has formulated the 2020/2022 Education during Emergency Plan (EDEP). The EDEP is a guiding framework for education stakeholders to ensure that children are safe and continue learning in a distance learning mode in three phases: response phase (Mar-May 2020), remedial and enrichment programmes phase (May-Sep 2020) and sustainability phase (Sep 2020-Sep 2022).

Due to COVID-19, schools, Makani Centres and UNICEF have all been making greater use of available technologies and experimenting with different ways to communicate with students. WhatsApp and Facebook have been used widely. However, there is an urgent need to develop a more advanced platform to help children to receive Makani services remotely and help to bridge the education gaps for vulnerable children.

School closure affected vulnerable children in different ways, especially those who have limited or no access to the internet or the needed family support. UNICEF believes that school closure will widen the existing educational attainment gaps already prevalent in the refugees and/or vulnerable Jordanian communities.

In 2021, UNICEF contracted Education Development Trust to develop the Learning Support service curriculum. The objective of this consultancy service is to redesign and provide the implementation materials to develop the Learning Support Services to meet the needs of students enrolled in school making insufficient progress. The programme and materials will focus on the CORE subject areas of mathematics and Arabic literacy that will support students to be successful within the grade level they are studying. The lesson plans developed will draw on the content of the humanities and arts curriculum as well as ensuring students are applying and developing their knowledge and experience through 21st Century skills and values-based education.

Objective of the Role:

The postholder will provide support to the two consultancy companies to ensure that they can work efficiently and effectively with a wide range of stakeholders in Jordan. The postholder will work closely with the contract manager and education specialist to review the lessons and materials provided by the two contractors, support in providing technical inputs for the scoping reports, and provide inputs for the training programmes assuring that the trainings are developed and trailed in a timely manner. The post holder should have the required skills to provide support to the consultancy companies to ensure that resources are appropriately contextualized and built on Jordan curriculum and the critical learning outcomes developed by the Ministry of Education. Additionally, the post holder should have a good understanding of the teaching of Arabic language, including understanding different pedagogical methods in the teaching of reading, so that they are able to provide real time feedback to the consultants on the trialing of materials (all types) through classroom observation.

Functional Responsibilities

1. Analytical support:

A- Provide day to day analytical support for both of the new programmes described above. This will include:

• Ensure the lead consultants on both projects have any materials and information needed to inform project decision making
• Setting up and managing all project documentation and materials
• To set up and ensure the smooth running of field trials of materials as required.
• To set up and manage quality assurance procedures
• To provide advice as required on technical and contextual aspects of the project.
• To observe lessons providing high quality feedback as new materials are trialed (both teaching and training)
• Maintain relationship with peers including relevant ministry employees

B- Act as a focal point for quality assurance. This will involve observing lessons and training and reporting back to educational specialists and consultants on what has been observed. It will also include supporting consultants to have remote access to live teaching and training sessions

C- Support the consultants on advising on procuring materials needed to develop the projects - this will include purchasing of story books and other resources as necessary through UNICEF procedures

E- Support the consultants in trialing lesson plan designs, script designs etc, by observing their use and providing good quality technical feedback

1. Project support

A- When necessary provide translation to allow smooth communication between international UNICEF staff and consultants with project stakeholders.

B-Set up and maintain a system for ensuring all knowledge products are carefully versioned and stored for easy access by all parties (on-going).

C- Ensure that the consultancy companies have all relevant information for scoping, for example providing them access to curriculum, learning objectives, textbooks, local resource ideas, reading materials etc. ensuring surveys are completed as relevant and FGSs, interviews etc are set up.

D- Set-up, attend and keep records of all meetings between stakeholders, UNICEF, MOE and consultants.

E- Set up and implement mechanisms to keep the projects on track and provide timely reporting to UNICEF.

F- Act as a focal point for QA. This will involve observing lessons and training and reporting back and discussing with Makani programme specialist, educational specialist and consultants on what has been observed. It will also include supporting consultants to have remote access to live teaching and training sessions by videoing or setting up live Teams meetings so they can observe remotely. As part of this deliverable you will also be expected to work with eh education specialist to QA written project items.

Competencies

Develops and implements sustainable business strategies, thinks long term and externally in order to positively shape the organization. Anticipates and perceives the impact and implications of future decisions and activities on other parts of the organization.(for levels IICA-2, IICA-3, LICA Specialist- 10, LICA Specialist-11, NOC, NOD, P3, P4 and above) Treats all individuals with respect; responds sensitively to differences and encourages others to do the same. Upholds organizational and ethical norms. Maintains high standards of trustworthiness. Role model for diversity and inclusion.

Acts as a positive role model contributing to the team spirit. Collaborates and supports the development of others. For people managers only: Acts as positive leadership role model, motivates, directs and inspires others to succeed, utilizing appropriate leadership styles. Demonstrates understanding of the impact of own role on all partners and always puts the end beneficiary first. Builds and maintains strong external relationships and is a competent partner for others (if relevant to the role). Efficiently establishes an appropriate course of action for self and/or others to accomplish a goal. Actions lead to total task accomplishment through concern for quality in all areas. Sees opportunities and takes the initiative to act on them. Understands that responsible use of resources maximizes our impact on our beneficiaries. Open to change and flexible in a fast paced environment. Effectively adapts own approach to suit changing circumstances or requirements. Reflects on experiences and modifies own behavior. Performance is consistent, even under pressure. Always pursues continuous improvements. Evaluates data and courses of action to reach logical, pragmatic decisions. Takes an unbiased, rational approach with calculated risks. Applies innovation and creativity to problem-solving. Expresses ideas or facts in a clear, concise and open manner. Communication indicates a consideration for the feelings and needs of others. Actively listens and proactively shares knowledge. Handles conflict effectively, by overcoming differences of opinion and finding common ground.

Education/Experience/Language requirements

• Bachelor Degree in education or social sciences or equivalent, Subject degree in Math or Arabic (desirable)
• At least 4 years experience in providing professional development for teachers.
• Proven evidence of developing teacher resources including lesson plans required.
• Experience of working within the Jordan education system will be an asset.
• Experience of working in an education setting other than Jordan (desirable).
• Fluency in Arabic and English is required.
• Knowledge of how to teach reading and language development in Arabic
• A good understanding of a range of pedagogical approaches and how they are applied in the classroom
• Highly skilled at observing lessons and providing quality feedback.
• Highly skilled in the use of ICT including PPT, Word, and EXCEL.
• Have A good understanding of the development of blended learning programmes

Contract type, level and duration

Contract type: ICA Contract level: LICA level 9 Contract duration: 8 months

For more details about the ICA contractual modality, please follow this link: https://www.unops.org/english/Opportunities/job-opportunities/what-we-offer/Pages/Individual-Contractor-Agreements.aspx

Additional Considerations

• Please note that the closing date is midnight Copenhagen time
• Applications received after the closing date will not be considered.
• Only those candidates that are short-listed for interviews will be notified.
• Qualified female candidates are strongly encouraged to apply.
• UNOPS seeks to reasonably accommodate candidates with special needs, upon request.
• Work life harmonization - UNOPS values its people and recognizes the importance of balancing professional and personal demands. We have a progressive policy on work-life harmonization and offer several flexible working options. This policy applies to UNOPS personnel on all contract types
• For staff positions only, UNOPS reserves the right to appoint a candidate at a lower level than the advertised level of the post
• For retainer contracts, you must complete a few Mandatory Courses (around 4 hours) in your own time, before providing services to UNOPS.
• The incumbent is responsible to abide by security policies, administrative instructions, plans and procedures of the UN Security Management System and that of UNOPS.

It is the policy of UNOPS to conduct background checks on all potential recruits/interns. Recruitment/internship in UNOPS is contingent on the results of such checks.