Job Description
Background / General Description
Established in 2002, the Global Partnership for Education (“Global Partnership” or GPE), formerly the Education for All Fast Track Initiative, has grown and evolved to become the premier partnership focused on basic education in developing countries. Its members include 60 of the world’s poorest developing countries, over 30 bilateral, regional, and multilateral agencies; development banks; the private sector; civil society groups; and teachers organizations. The Board of Directors is the Global Partnership’s governing body, sets its policies and strategies and approves all funding.
The mission of the Global Partnership is to galvanize and coordinate a global effort to deliver a good quality education to all children, prioritizing the poorest and most vulnerable. To that end, the Global Partnership helps its member countries to develop and implement sound education sector plans and has allocated approximately $4.1 billion in education grants to date. The Global Partnership mobilizes international financing and promotes/ efficient use of international and national resources to support developing countries’ education goals and sector strategies.
With about 78 staff, the GPE Secretariat is hosted by the World Bank in Washington, D.C. As a consequence of the partnership taking a greater leadership role in achieving international development goals in education, the Secretariat is developing its capacity to support country-level processes and to meet expectations from the partnership’s stakeholders to achieve concrete results and education outcomes for children in developing countries.
The Secretariat’s new Strategy, Policy and Performance (SPP) Team has been created to play a critical role in strengthening the overall technical rigor and quality of GPE’s support to education development and ensure a results focus in all GPE activities. The team collaborates closely with the
Country Support Team, which is responsible for supporting member countries in their education sector development, implementation and monitoring, including through GPE grant applications and reporting processes. The two teams work jointly to develop and implement quality standards, with the SPP leading on jointly owned efforts to put in place structures and processes to quality assure GPE’s technical work.
The GPE is therefore seeking an experienced, high-performing, energetic individual to build and manage a stronger quality assurance framework for organization, and to contribute more broadly to enhancing the technical capacity of the Secretariat and the GPE partnership in the areas of sector planning, sector monitoring and sector performance.
Note: If the selected candidate is a current Bank Group staff member with a Regular or Open-Ended appointment, s/he will retain his/her Regular or Open-Ended appointment. All others will be offered a 2 year term appointment.
Duties and Accountabilities
The successful candidate will report to GPE’s Chief Technical Officer. S/he will play a critical role in establishing, maintaining and strengthening GPE’s quality assurance processes, taking on the following specific responsibilities:
- Supports the development of procedures, guidelines and tools for quality assuring GPE’s portfolio of grants and activities, working closely with members of the Country Support Team to ensure alignment between the Partnership’s strategic goals and its country facing activities.
- Working with the Country Support Team and the Senior Quality Assurance Officer, supports quality assurance and technical review processes required as part of GPE’s new results based funding model. This includes processes for reviewing the quality of Education Sector Plans, for ensuring partners meet requirements for strengthened data systems and financing; and for monitoring sectoral outcomes.
- Supports analysis and quality assurance of education sector plans and sector monitoring tools and activities.
- Reviews the quality of GPE inputs in ongoing implementation of sector plans, for example, in relation to joint sector review processes and other forms of reporting on results.
- Assures appropriate technical validation of results agreements with GPE partners.
- Drafts quality assurance reports
- Collaborates with other Secretariat teams through GPE quality assurance process
- Works closely with the country support team during key phases of the country quality assurance process
- Interacts regularly with other teams around quality assurance issues
- Contributes to the improvement of GPE quality assurance processes and tools
- Provides inputs to the development or strengthening of key guidelines
- Provides comments on other GPE publications and tools
- Contributes to policy briefs and technical work of the Strategy, Policy and Performance team
- Drafts contributions to policy briefs
- Analyses thematic issues (learning, equity, efficiency, teachers, etc.)
- Participates in strategic planning, ensuring that GPE develops strong, results focused initiatives capable of leveraging substantial improvement in learning outcomes for all children. Ensure the translation of strategic objectives into programmable priorities and assures appropriate technical validation of results agreements with GPE partners.
Additionally it is expected that (s)he will:
- Represent SPP in certain Secretariat meetings and tasks;
- Support SPP to prepare materials for presentations and follow up actions;
- Contribute content to the GPE web site;
- Undertake periodic mission travel to support quality assurance processes at country level;
- Contribute to other tasks as needed.
The Quality Assurance Officer is accountable for performing the responsibilities, modeling the behaviors and maintaining the technical competencies (listed below) in his or her capacity as a member of the GPE Strategy, Policy and Performance Team. Accountability means being answerable for managing quality, risks, results, institutional initiatives and compliance with GPE policies and procedures.
Selection Criteria
- Master’s degree in education or a related discipline, including training and work experience in education sector policy, basic education, with supporting skills in both quantitative and qualitative analysis;
- At least five years of prior experience in the analysis of education policies, and quality assurance and validation of technical excellence in education sector programs, projects and initiatives.
- Proficiency in English and French, meaning the ability to work (converse, read and write) in both languages;
- Ability to communicate clearly and accurately both verbally and in writing;
- Experience in education sector related research, monitoring and evaluation would be an asset.
Competencies:
- Knowledge and Experience of Education in developing countries- Demonstrates relevant experience in the field of education policy and policy implementation, with a focus on basic education.
- Policy Analysis - Demonstrates substantive working or functional proficiency level sufficient to apply this competency to all tasks requiring the competency including those with significant challenges
- Lead and Innovate- Develops innovative solutions.
- Deliver Results for Clients- Proactively addresses clients’ stated and unstated needs.
- Collaborate Within Teams and Across Boundaries- Collaborates across boundaries, gives own perspective and willingly receives diverse perspectives.
- Create, Apply and Share Knowledge- Applies knowledge across WBG to strengthen solutions for internal and/or external clients.
- Make Smart Decisions - Interprets a wide range of information and pushes to move forward.
- GPE is committed to achieving diversity in terms of race, gender, nationality, culture, and educational background. Individuals with disabilities are equally encouraged to apply.
