CHILD SAFEGUARDING:

Level 3: The post holder will have contact with children and/or young people either frequently (e.g. once a week or more) or intensively (e.g. four days in one month or more or overnight) because they work country programs; or are visiting country programs; or because they are responsible for implementing the police checking/vetting process staff.

ROLE PURPOSE:

Save the Children Pakistan (SC Pakistan) is seeking a Senior Education Spcialist-ECE and FLN for a 9-month long-term consultancy (for its USDA-funded McGovern-Dole Food for Education and Child Nutrition Program. The Sindh Sustainable School Meals (SSSM) project is implemented in three districts of Sindh — Sujawal, Tando Muhammad Khan and Thatta — reaching over 600 schools and nearly 150,000 direct beneficiaries over the life of the project.

The Sindh education sector is currently served by a growing set of donor-funded interventions in Early Childhood Education (ECE), Foundational Literacy and Numeracy (FLN), and School Health and Nutrition. Much of this work is being designed and delivered at the provincial and cluster hub level including standards, curricula, teacher training packages, assessment frameworks and coaching models. Over the next five years, convergence in these areas will be critical to ensure consistency at the school, teacher, and day-to-day instructional practice levels.

The central purpose of this consultancy is to support positioning SSSM’s education components to better align with, converge around, benefit from and strengthen what is already underway in Sindh’s educational landscape, rather than developing parallel or duplicative content and approaches. The Senior Education Specialist will map the terrain, build the coordination architecture, and co-design mechanisms by which cluster hub work is strengthened and teachers are reached through coaching, mentoring and monitoring systems that SSSM’s school-based meals work can help the GoS to sustain.

Reporting to the Chief of Party and working closely with the Save Country Office Education Advisor and international experts, the Senior Education Specialist will provide senior technical direction on ECE and FLN across the project, serve as SSSM’s day-to-day technical interlocutor with the Early Childhood Education Directorate, School Education & Literacy Department (SELD) Government of Sindh, and with the donor and implementing partner community working on FLN in the province.

SCOPE OF ROLE:

• Type: Short-term consultancy for duration of 9 months

• Travel: Required to field locations including but not limited to: Karachi, and Sindh Province target districts (e.g., Thatta, Sujawal, Badin, Tando Mohammad Khan).

• Budget responsibilities: None

• Key internal contacts: USDA Project Management, SC Pakistan Senior Management Team

• Key external contacts: Relevant Federal and provincial Government Departments and stakeholders

KEY AREAS OF RESPONSIBILITY AND DELIVERABLES:

1. Donor and partner coordination on Foundational Literacy and Numeracy:

• Map active FLN and ECE interventions operating in Sindh, and specifically in SSSM’s three districts — including donor-funded programmes, government initiatives, and implementing partner workstreams — identifying content, standards, tools, coaching models and assessment approaches already in use or under development.
• Establish and maintain working relationships with various technical advisory groups and FLN donor programmes and implementing partners to enable SSSM schools to adopt, adapt, build from, and reinforce existing packages and workplans.
• Represent SSSM in FLN and ECE coordination forums (in close coordination with Save’s Education Advisor), technical working groups (FLN, ECE, and School Health and Nutrition), and donor working groups at provincial and national level, and ensure SSSM’s positioning, contributions and asks are clearly and consistently articulated and that SSSM is well aligned with donor and GoS plans and priorities.
• Identify concrete points of convergence — shared teacher training materials, common assessment instruments, aligned coaching protocols, joint monitoring approaches, SSSM schools selection for book and materials distribution etc. Negotiate the arrangements that allow SSSM schools to benefit from and engage further from existing work/plans particularly in areas of resource provision and gaps
• Produce and maintain a clear, current view of who is doing what, where, and to what standard, and advise the Chief of Party, Save’s Education team and SSSM leadership on how SSSM can align, complement, and initiate or lead.
• Provide technical support to the ECE Directorate, SELD Government of Sindh, in ascertaining, reviewing and consolidating standards for early childhood education and foundational learning — including learning standards, service delivery standards, and classroom quality standards.
• Support the Directorate in reviewing, adapting and rationalising curricula and learning materials for ECE and early grades, drawing on and harmonising existing donor- and government-developed content.
• Support the Directorate in defining and strengthening teacher training and professional development approaches for ECE and FLN, including the design of coherent training pathways, cascade models, and micro-credentialing towards accredited ECE teachers, while also supporting quality assurance of training delivery.
• Position SSSM as a constructive technical resource to the Directorate and other donors, ensuring the project’s contributions are additive to government systems, institutionally anchored, and sustainable beyond the life of the project.
• Support the ECE Directorate to design the practical mechanism by which ECE and FLN work developed at the cluster hub level is translated down to the individual school, the teacher, and the classroom — including what is adapted, who delivers it, at what frequency, and with what support.
• Support the ECE Directorate to design and operationalise a coaching, mentoring, credentialing, and continuous professional support model for teachers in SSSM schools, ensuring it is aligned with the coaching approaches already used by other donor programmes and by government at cluster level.
• Support the ECE Directorate to design and operationalise classroom-level monitoring approaches building on observation tools, learning assessment instruments, and feedback loops in ways that ensure alignment with existing instruments (including EGRA and equivalent FLN assessments) already in use in the province.
• Advise on how the school feeding intervention can be sequenced and integrated with FLN and ECE interventions so that improvements in enrolment, attendance and retention translate into improvements in foundational learning outcomes.
• Build the capacity of SSSM field staff, partner staff, cluster hub personnel and government counterparts to deliver, supervise and sustain the coaching and monitoring model.
• Provide ongoing technical oversight and quality assurance for ECE, FLN, teacher professional development and early grade learning activities under SSSM, ensuring alignment with SSSM deliverables, USDA McGovern-Dole requirements, Government of Sindh processes and Save the Children International technical standards.
• Work closely with the SSSM REALM team (Research, Monitoring, Accountability, Learning, and Evaluation) team to ensure ECE and FLN outcomes — literacy and numeracy rates, enrolment, attendance, retention — are measured credibly and reported against agreed deliverables.
• Support the production of high-quality donor reports, technical briefs, case studies and success stories, with particular emphasis on documenting the convergence and alignment approach as a contribution to the wider sector.
• Contribute to SSSM’s advocacy and communications plans, and represent SSSM at SCI donor and regional technical platforms as required.
• Deliver a clear set of consultancy outputs, including at minimum: an ECE and FLN landscape and convergence map with existing and future donor programming and sectoral partners; a coordination and alignment strategy emphasizing integration of school feeding/health and nutrition; a school-level translation model with coaching and monitoring protocols; and a handover and sustainability plan for SSSM and government counterparts.

2. Support to the Early Childhood Education Directorate:

• Provide technical support to the ECE Directorate, SELD Government of Sindh, in ascertaining, reviewing and consolidating standards for early childhood education and foundational learning — including learning standards, service delivery standards, and classroom quality standards.
• Support the Directorate in reviewing, adapting and rationalising curricula and learning materials for ECE and early grades, drawing on and harmonising existing donor- and government-developed content.
• Support the Directorate in defining and strengthening teacher training and professional development approaches for ECE and FLN, including the design of coherent training pathways, cascade models, and micro-credentialing towards accredited ECE teachers, while also supporting quality assurance of training delivery.
• Position SSSM as a constructive technical resource to the Directorate and other donors, ensuring the project’s contributions are additive to government systems, institutionally anchored, and sustainable beyond the life of the project.

3. Translating cluster hub-level work to the school and classroom:

• Support the ECE Directorate to design the practical mechanism by which ECE and FLN work developed at the cluster hub level is translated down to the individual school, the teacher, and the classroom — including what is adapted, who delivers it, at what frequency, and with what support.
• Support the ECE Directorate to design and operationalise a coaching, mentoring, credentialing, and continuous professional support model for teachers in SSSM schools, ensuring it is aligned with the coaching approaches already used by other donor programmes and by government at cluster level.
• Support the ECE Directorate to design and operationalise classroom-level monitoring approaches building on observation tools, learning assessment instruments, and feedback loops in ways that ensure alignment with existing instruments (including EGRA and equivalent FLN assessments) already in use in the province.
• Advise on how the school feeding intervention can be sequenced and integrated with FLN and ECE interventions so that improvements in enrolment, attendance and retention translate into improvements in foundational learning outcomes.
• Build the capacity of SSSM field staff, partner staff, cluster hub personnel and government counterparts to deliver, supervise and sustain the coaching and monitoring model.

BEHAVIOURS (Values in Practice):

Accountability:

• holds self-accountable for making decisions, managing resources efficiently, achieving and role modelling Save the Children values
• holds the team and partners accountable to deliver on their responsibilities - giving them the freedom to deliver in the best way they see fit, providing the necessary development to improve performance and applying appropriate consequences when results are not achieved.

Ambition:

• sets ambitious and challenging goals for themselves and their team, takes responsibility for their own personal development and encourages their team to do the same
• widely shares their personal vision for Save the Children, engages and motivates others
• future orientated, thinks strategically and on a global scale.

Collaboration:

• builds and maintains effective relationships, with their team, colleagues, Members and external partners and supporters
• values diversity, sees it as a source of competitive strength
• approachable, good listener, easy to talk to.

Creativity:

• develops and encourages new and innovative solutions
• willing to take disciplined risks.

Integrity:

• honest, encourages openness and transparency; demonstrates highest levels of integrity

QUALIFICATION & EXPERIENCE:

• Master’s degree in Education or a closely related field, with a minimum of 10 years of relevant experience, including at least 5 years in increasingly senior, technical advisory or donor-facing roles on USAID, USDA, FCDO or other large (USD 20 million+) bilateral projects. A Bachelor’s degree with 15 years of experience will be considered.
• Demonstrated subject matter expertise in Foundational Literacy and Numeracy and Early Childhood Education, including standards, curricula and teacher professional development.
• Demonstrated experience coordinating across multiple donor-funded education programmes, and a track record of achieving convergence and alignment between programmes rather than building parallel systems.
• Demonstrated experience working with government education directorates on standards setting, curriculum review and teacher training design — experience with the ECE Directorate or SELD Government of Sindh is strongly preferred.
• Demonstrated experience translating system- or cluster-level education interventions into classroom-level practice, including the design of teacher coaching, mentoring and classroom observation and monitoring systems.
• Demonstrated experience with EGRA (Early Grade Reading Assessment) or equivalent FLN assessment instruments, teacher mentoring and coaching models, and community mobilisation.
• Experience with USDA McGovern-Dole projects highly preferred.
• Experience of solving complex, multi-stakeholder issues through analysis, definition of a clear way forward, and securing buy-in.
• Ability to present complex information in a succinct and compelling manner.
• Extensive networks across the public and private sector in Sindh, and extensive experience working in the education sector specifically in Sindh.
• Strong teamwork ability, cultural sensitivity, and gender balance in stakeholder communication.
• Proficiency in spoken and written English and Urdu required. Sindhi language skills highly desired.
• Ability and willingness to spend extensive time in project field locations and implementation sites, working alongside project staff, partners and government counterparts for at least 30% of the time, or more as needed based on project requirements. 

Additional Job Responsibilities:

The duties and responsibilities as set out above are not exhaustive and the consultant may be required to carry out additional duties within reasonableness of their level of skills and experience.

CONSULTANCY TERMS:

• This is a nine-month, project-based consulting assignment.
• Anticipated time required is 7-10 days per month. The individual will be able to work from home/at a location of their choice but must be available to participate in meetings online/in-person as required.
• Payment will be on monthly basis inclusive of taxes.
• Extension or renewal will be subject to availability of funds, satisfactory performance, and programmatic requirements.

Equal Opportunities:

The role holder is required to carry out the duties in accordance with the SCI Equal Opportunities and Diversity policies and procedures.

Child Safeguarding:

We need to keep children safe so our selection process, which includes rigorous background checks, reflects our commitment to the protection of children from abuse.

Safeguarding our Staff:

The post holder is required to carry out the duties in accordance with the SCI anti-harassment policy.

Health and Safety:

The role holder is required to carry out the duties in accordance with SCI Health and Safety policies and procedures.

Save the Children has zero tolerance towards Sexual Exploitation and Abuse, Fraud, Bribery and Corruption.