Education M/E Manager at International Rescue Committee (IRC)

JOB SUMMARY

Under the supervision of the M&E Coordinator, the education consortium M&E Manager will work closely with education and child protection sectors/projects have suitable monitoring and evaluation systems, and regularly review and maintain the systems.  The manager will also be responsible to incorporate relevant program indicators into the projects M&E systems that enables to measure the contribution of individual projects in achieving program objectives.   In general, the major purposes of the M&E Manager position is to provide strategic guidance and support to education and child protection program teams in establishing both program and project M&E systems. 

The position holder has the role of supervising M&E Officer for education and the CPMIS database assistant/officer. As a result, s/he is primarily responsible for building M&E Staff capacity through organizing trainings, mentoring, coaching and supervision.  Together with the M&E Coordinator, S/he technically supports IRC Nigeria to meet standards set out in the Strategic Action Plan (SAP 2020) and IRC’s global Monitoring for Action (MfA) initiative for improving monitoring practice and use of data for decision making within the organization.

RESPONSIBILITIES

A.     Program/project design and learning (5% of time)

• Lead diagnostic studies, researches, evaluations and surveys within education and child protection sectors.
• Participate in program/ project design specially in developing logframes;
• Ensure that detailed and feasible project monitoring plans are developed that: i) provide an indicator matrix, ii) consider ethical and safe collection and storage of data, iii) consider data quality audits, vi) consider storing, protecting and sharing project documents;
• Closely work with M&E Officers to make sure all projects have tested standard monitoring tools that capture both program activity and indicators progresses;
• Make sure all projects have accountability mechanisms up and running;
• Work with project and support staff to determine which monitoring activities will take place and which data collection methods will be used to ensure their adequacy and appropriateness;
• Work with project and support staff to ensure that project design in proposals is logically sound, beneficiary-informed and contextually appropriate, based on learning from previous projects and technical best practice, and includes a Theory of Change and SMART logframe (with IRC core indicators and enabling assessment of project progress, quality, outcomes, and if relevant impact);
• Assist in conducting and documenting end of project learning reviews, and sharing lessons learned and best practices, incorporating these into new project designs;
• In consultation with the M&E Coordinator, organize lesson sharing events like lesson bazars to fertilize learning among different projects and/or sectors;
• Assist in identifying, documenting, storing and sharing lessons learned that have implications for refinement of best programmatic practice;

Monitoring and evaluation (45% of time)

• Facilitate the preparations of monthly/annul project activity plans including M&E plans
• Work with project staff to determine which monitoring activities will take place and which data collection methods to use;
• Work with project staff to ensure that the project work plans include monitoring activities (or that a stand-alone monitoring work plan is in place), is up-to date and progress tracked;
• Work with M&E Officers and project staff to develop, translate, pilot and finalize data collection tools as needed;
• Design survey data collection tools and methodologies;
• Together with the respective Core Program M&E Officer, establish project/program databases and/or tracking sheets, and/or set up in the data platform (COMET);
• Work with projects to ensure that data is collected and entered into databases and/or tracking sheets, and/or the data platform on a regular basis;
• Work with project staff to track progress on action points related to implementation and M&E activities;
• Work with project staff to provide M&E inputs for reports written during project implementation;
• Develop and implement strategies for tracking cross-cutting issues;
• Establish a mechanism for measuring the contribution of each core programs in achieving the SAP;
• Closely follow up the field data collection and flag the data collection issues to the M&E coordinator and project staff;
• Conduct data quality audits of project data to identify and resolve systemic problems affecting data quality;
• Document findings from data quality audits and store in project files to ensure collective and sustainable access
• Document schedule of activities related to sharing reports with the project team, donors and other stakeholders;
• Assist the M&E staff in conducting reflective practice forums at field office/ project level and compile lessons from project implementation processes.

Information management and reporting (35% of time)

• Provide M&E inputs for regular analysis and action planning meetings to (1)  compare data against project milestones, targets, and quality expectations across project sites; (2) identify issues requiring concerned staff attention;
• Extract lessons learned from projects, systematically document and make easily accessible to staff;
• Support the M&E staff in ensuring all projects have downward/ forward accountability mechanisms and functional;
• Support M&E Officers to ensure that data is collected and entered into databases and/or tracking sheets, and/or the data platform on a regular basis;

Staff capacity building (10% of time)

• Prepare M&E staff mentoring coaching plans and implement accordingly;
• Train staff in data collection methods, management, analysis, and how to use data for decision making;
• Assist in recruitment of enumerators and HR onboarding.
• Provide consistent, supportive supervision to strengthen staff performance as necessary to meet monitoring objectives.

Perform other duties assigned by the supervisor (5% of time)

• Perform other task related assignment proposed by his/her supervisor/s

REQUIREMENTS

•  University degree (statistics, social science, development economics, or a related discipline);
• Minimum two (2) years of experience within the development / humanitarian sector;
• Proven technical skills in monitoring and evaluation, including experience with multi-sectorial and multi-donor funded programs and experience with qualitative and quantitative data collection and analysis;
• Proven abilities in developing monitoring plans, data collection, information management, use of databases, and analysis and performance monitoring;
• Demonstrated ability to train and build capacity of others;
• Comprehensive knowledge of humanitarian accountability principles and their translation into practice;
• Strong planning, organizational and interpersonal skills;
• Excellent analytical, presentation, and reporting skills;
• Excellent database, data management and data analysis skills, with experience using at least 2 software applications such as Microsoft Excel, Access, SPSS, STATA, Epi-data, Epi-Info; and
• Strong commitment to IRC’s mission, purpose and values.