International Consultants at UNICEF

Background

• Nigeria is home to an estimated 237 million people, 49.7 per cent of whom are children aged 0–18.1 The child population is growing at 1.5 percent per year.
• The rapid child population growth places significant pressure on the delivery of social services, while it creates potential to reap dividends from the impending youth bulge if the country successfully invests in children’s education and skilling.
• Nigeria has striven to provide quality education, learning and skills development opportunities to the increasing number of children, but it has fallen short of the goal. Although basic education is free and compulsory, 10.2 million children of primary school age and 8.1 million children of junior secondary school age remain out of school.
• Due to the limited access to schooling and poor quality of education, about 75 per cent of children aged 7–14 do not develop foundational literacy and numeracy skills4, which are building blocks for continued learning and acquisition of advanced skills.
• The gaps in foundational skills are cumulative across the life cycle, resulting in an increased risk of school dropout and a lower chance of developing the skills necessary to participate in society and the labour market. For example, 74 per cent of the adult population in Nigeria are financially illiterate.5 Over 80 per cent of Nigerian youth aged 15–24 years do not have digital skills,6 which are essential to work and thrive in a knowledge-based and technology-driven economy.

Scope of work
The objectives of this tracer study are as follows:

• Assess the effectiveness of GESP in increasing girls’ skills and attitudes to work as well as the programme impact on transition to work (i.e., employment and entrepreneurship) and income generation.
• Assess the extent to which the GESP interventions are gender-transformative (e.g., sense of agency; self-esteem; self-efficacy) and addressing barriers faced by adolescent girls and young women.
• Examine the social impacts of the programme on parental and community attitudes toward girls’ education and employment?
• Identify enabling and constraining factors by examining how various factors (e.g., programme designs; characteristics of girls; skills and practice of trainers and employers; attitudes of parents and community) are associated with the outcomes.

Work Assignment Overview
Inception of tracer study

• Conduct a desk review.
• Draft an inception report.
• Organize an inception meeting.
• Finalize an inception report

Deliverables / Outputs:
Inception report with research plan

Preparation of data collection:

• Draft, pilot and finalize survey instruments.
• Develop survey manuals.
• Train national consultants.
• Develop sampling frames and guidelines.
• Coordinate sampling.
• Develop and finalize survey plans.

Deliverables / Outputs:

• Survey instruments.
• Survey manuals.
• Record of training for national consultants.
• Sampling frames and guidelines.
• Survey plan.

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

• Advanced university degree in education, international development, social sciences or other relevant fields.
• A minimum of 5 years of experience in education. research, including quantitative and qualitative methods, in development and/or humanitarian contexts.
• Experiencing in leading and/or coordinating a research team.
• Experience in gender analysis
• Strong knowledge of the education, skills, and labor contexts in Nigeria and/or other sub-Saharan countries.
• Experience working with UN agencies or other international development agencies.
• Demonstrated skills to present ideas concisely for diverse audiences and to give practical, actionable advice grounded in evidence.

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Background

• Nigeria has striven to provide quality education, learning and skills development opportunities to the increasing number of children, but it has fallen short of the goal.
• Although basic education is free and compulsory, 10.2 million children of primary school age and 8.1 million children of junior secondary school age remain out of school.
• Due to the limited access to schooling and poor quality of education, about 75 per cent of children aged 7–14 do not develop foundational literacy and numeracy skills4, which are building blocks for continued learning and acquisition of advanced skills.
• In Benue state, 12.8 per cent of children of primary school age and 6.7 per cent of junior secondary school age are out of school, and about 76 per cent of children aged 7–14 do not develop foundational literacy and numeracy skills.
• There are multiple bottlenecks. Supply-side factors include inadequate domestic funding and government planning capacity, whereas demand-side barriers include poverty and social/gender norms. Humanitarian crises, driven by recurrent farmer-herder conflicts and armed violence, affected the provision and access to quality education in the state.
• According to IOM’s Displacement Tracking Matrix (DTM) Round 46 (2024), over 400,000 internally displaced people (IDPs) were recorded in Benue. Displaced families are scattered across 15 formal IDP camps in 5 LGAs of Logo, Guma, Makurdi, Kwande, & Gwer West , informal settlements, and overstretched host communities, often surviving with limited or no access to education and learning.

Scope of work

• Completion of a needs assessment report for Benue, including visits to the state to meet with state officials and humanitarian actors, in conjunction with the UNICEF Enugu education specialist
• Completion of a needs assessment report for Sokoto including visits to the state to meet with state officials and humanitarian actors, in conjunction with the UNICEF Sokoto education team.

Work Assignment Overview
Task / Work Area:
Component 1: Rapid education needs assessment in Benue state

• Develop a draft work plan including data collection tools for both needs assessments in conjunction with the UNICEF teams at state and country office level
• Deliverables / Output:
  • Draft work plan for needs assessment in Benue and Sokoto submitted
• Conduct visits to Benue and Sokoto states and conduct meetings, training of enumerators for Sokoto and other data collection activities, as required.
• Deliverables / Output:
  • Mission plan and data collection tools submitted.

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

• Advanced university degree in education, international development, social sciences or other relevant fields.
• Minimum of 5 years of experience in education. research, including quantitative and qualitative methods, in development and/or humanitarian contexts.
• Experiencing in leading and/or coordinating a research team.
• Experience in training
• Experience in mapping data against key policy and international priorities.
• Experience in developing and publishing research reports and policy briefs with policy recommendations.