Education Officer at Save The Children

The project is designed to contribute towards the attainment of foundational skills with an integration of SEL, to address barriers to equity for the most marginalized children and climate resilience actions. The project approach, strategies, and interventions are gender-sensitive and have a high level of child-safeguarding measures. 

The Programme Education Officer will provide operational and technical support to the project team under the leadership of the Education Programme Coordinator to implement all Education activities for the project. The job holder will also be working closely with SCI Education, Advocacy, Communication, Campaigns and Media, Operations Teams and other stakeholders at the community, LGA and State level.

Under the guidance of the Education Programme Coordinator, he/she will ensure that the SB2S project adheres to safe programming and is implemented in a coordinated, harmonized and aligned manner.

KEY AREAS OF ACCOUNTABILITY

Project Coordination & Management:

• Implement the SB2S project activities like back to school campaigns, enrolment drives, door to door campaigns, community mobilization to bring out of school children and retain at risk of dropped out children across the BAY States, Nigeria in line with the design of the project.
• Support the Education Programme Coordinator to establish, maintain, and strengthen linkages in the design, planning, implementation, monitoring and evaluation, reporting of Safe Back 2 School (SB2S) project. 
• Ensure that procurement and distribution of teaching and learning materials and equipment on timely and in line with SCI policies and procedures; ensure accuracy of portfolio inventory (assets, supplies, materials) with supply chain and operations team.
• Conduct and contribute to needs assessment, baseline and endline assessment in the respective project locations. 
• Ensure accurate project documentation, including collection of monitoring data and tracking of progress on output indicators; utilize data to contribute to reports as requested by management.
• Supervise and manage the teachers, including facilitation of teacher training. 
• Support facilitation of training programs for teachers, school safety committee, climate change resilience school clubs and SBMCs.
• Support activities around safe schools and climate resilience actions.
• Support enrolment campaign activities and coordination with the different stakeholders.
• Facilitate relationships with communities and community leaders to ensure buy-in and Do No Harm
• Create and sustain positive working relationships with the partners, government officials and other key stakeholders and work in collaboration with relevant education authorities to support the SB2S project implementation.
• Contribute to ensuring timely and quality reports are submitted as per the reporting requirements to the Education sector lead and Head of Education.
• Working closely with Education Programme Coordinator to ensure quality programme design, delivery, documentation and reporting of education activities in the respective States.

Operational Planning and implementation

• Work closely with the Education Programme Coordinator in developing, planning and monitoring project detail implementation plan, procurement plan, phased budget, MEAL Plan with documentation and reporting for all Education interventions in the State.
• Recommend technical solutions to speed up the project implementation and budget performance in line with the project work plan and budget.
• Effectively support the project team in developing plans, in line with best practices for education project design and Save the Children International planning guidelines and ensure compliance with the agreed work plans and that program objectives and targets are being achieved in line with the funding proposal.
• Maintain high standard of safeguarding, transparency and accountability during program design and support in expediting implementation while ensuring integrity and timeliness of project duration and meeting program objectives, compliance with donors & Save the Children policies.
• Support in providing regular operations and implementation updates to the Project and State Team Leads on project progress and challenges to allow for timely interventions and corrective actions by the management.
• Ensure the timely reviews and adjustments for the project operational and implementation plan and budget as may be required from time to time. 

Safeguarding

• Ensure safe programming in the planning, implementation, monitoring, trainings, campaigns and workshops across the SB2S project period.
• Adhere to the Do no Harm principles across the entire steps within the Program Management Cycle

Financial and Narrative Reporting.

• Support the development and review of timely and high-quality progress and end of project narrative and financial reports which are in accordance with the donor reporting schedule and formats.
• Participate in reviewing all program financial reports ensuring that donor guidelines have been followed and are of high standards.
• Participate in progress review meetings to address key performance issues from the reports.

Internal and external engagements

• Ensuring that the program experience is represented and given recognition at stakeholder meetings, workshops, donor, networks, and any other engagements. 
• Develop and maintain regular channels of communication with partners and key stakeholders at all levels (LGA, State and National).

MEAL

• Effectively support MEAL staff in assessments, baseline, and evaluation studies, putting in place a functional Activity Tracking Table.
• Ensure that the projects’ quality benchmarks are followed up and implemented in project interventions.
• Collecting and managing complaints and feedback in close coordination with MEAL team and Education Team.
• Ensure regular monitoring of projects results, documentation of projects case studies, lessons learnt, significant changes and best practices and coordinating learning and reflection meetings/sessions.  
• Ensure effective programs/ projects monitoring, and evaluation systems is in place.
• Monitor programs/ projects activities to ensure quality, timeliness and adherence to both Country Office and Save the Children policies and procedures.

QUALIFICATIONS   

• Minimum of a Bachelor’s degree in education or other related fields. Experience in managing integrated programs across different thematic areas such as inclusive education, climate change education, teacher education, Teacher Professional Development (TPD), Child protection, child rights or governance is an advantage.

EXPERIENCE AND SKILLS

Essential

• At least 3 years of accrued working experience in programme implementation with an International NGO and those applying partnership approaches is desirable. 
• Experience in strategic thinking and planning skills, being able to set priorities, prepare manageable plans and to evaluate progress.
• Experience of working on and supporting the implementation of climate change education interventions in humanitarian or development setting is an added advantage. 
• Ability to coach, mentor and build the capacity of teachers in a humanitarian or development setting will be an added advantage.
• Experience of working with diverse group of stakeholders at the community, LG, State and National levels.
• Strong analytical skills and strategic planning abilities.
• Ability to establish and maintain cordial relations and perform effectively as a member of a team.
• Willingness to travel and work in hard-to-reach areas, occasionally under strenuous conditions.
• Computer literacy and excellent documentation skills are a must.
• Availability and willingness to work extra hours during times of humanitarian responses.
• Highly developed cultural awareness and ability to work well in an international environment with people from diverse backgrounds and cultures.
• Ability to intervene with crisis management or troubleshooting as necessary. 
• Highly developed interpersonal and communication skills including influencing, negotiation and coaching.
• Excellent time management and planning capacity.
• Fluent English language skills (written and verbal) and Local language skills (Hausa, etc.).