Consultancy: DMS Project Coordination (Zambia) and HQ Analytical Support - Education Section, PD - NYHQ, Requisition# 506243

The consultant, in collaboration with the UNICEF Zambia Country Office, will support the Ministry of General Education in institutionalizing the generation of the community, school, district and provincial profiles and in linking the profiles to other streams of the Ministry’s workflow, leading to sustainable generation and use of the profiles. The consultant will support the Ministry of General Education and the UNICEF Country Office in assessing the understanding and use of profiles in selected schools and support the preparations for the impact evaluation. The consultant will also provide some capacity building to the education section of the UNICEF Country Office on basic data handling, analysis and presentation skills.

If you are a committed, creative professional and are passionate about making a lasting difference for children, the world's leading children's rights organization would like to hear from you.

For 70 years, UNICEF has been working on the ground in 190 countries and territories to promote children's survival, protection and development. The world's largest provider of vaccines for developing countries, UNICEF supports child health and nutrition, good water and sanitation, quality basic education for all boys and girls, and the protection of children from violence, exploitation, and AIDS. UNICEF is funded entirely by the voluntary contributions of individuals, businesses, foundations and governments.

Background & Rationale

Through the “promise renewed” commitment, and as part of efforts to strengthen organizational capacity to support quality education for all children, UNICEF has re-emphasized its focus on equity which is at the core of the 2014-2017 Strategic Plan. Guided by the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the Millennium Declaration and Education for All (EFA), UNICEF works to ensure the right of all children to education. The current Strategic Plan has a strong focus on equitable quality and inclusive learning within its education result that it expects to achieve by the end of the UNICEF Strategic Plan period in 2017. One of the key outputs for education in the 2014-2017 Strategic Plan is “Enhanced support to communities with disadvantaged and excluded children to start schooling at the right age and attend regularly” and one of the related output indicators is “Countries in which the education management information system feeds findings back to communities/school management committees”.

In order to support progress towards this indicator, UNICEF-Education successfully submitted a project proposal to the Global Partnership for Education/Global and Regional Activities (GPE/GRA) fund. The project, formerly named “District/School Profiles” and renamed “Data Must Speak” (DMS), started in 2014 with two pilot countries, Madagascar and Togo, and expanded to Nepal, Zambia and Peru in 2015, and the Philippines in 2016. The project supports the setting up of data feedback tools (such as district/school profile cards) for increasing accountability (in particular for pro-equity allocation of resources), community participation and improving school performance (learning outcomes, equity and drop-out rates’ reduction).

In March 2016 $750,000 in funding from the Hewlett Foundation was secured for Phase II of the project. Extending DMS into a second phase provides an opportunity to evaluate the tools designed during Phase I and the impact of community participation and use of data on learning outcomes, student attendance etc. In order to achieve the planned project outcome of “Improved global knowledge regarding what works, or not, in which context, for community participation and the use of data for improved equity and learning” an Evaluation and Knowledge Generation Plan has been developed. A key component of this plan is a randomized control trial (impact evaluation) of “community” school profile cards and related trainings in Zambia which is due to commence in October 2017.

In addition to the preparation of the impact evaluation the project in Zambia, DMS implementation Zambia is currently focusing on the institutionalization of the generation and use of the profiles (which have been produced in 2016 and 2017) within Ministry of General Education workflows and processes, to ensure long-term government ownership and sustainability.

The forthcoming UNICEF Strategic Plan 2018-2021 and the Gender Action Plan emphasize strengthened engagement with disadvantaged adolescents. It is key that such engagement is evidence-based and informed by relevant, up-to-date data analysis. Such data analysis are very useful for supporting cross-sectoral discussions and effective collaboration between education, adolescent and gender programming at country, regional and HQ levels.

Purpose

The consultant, in collaboration with the UNICEF Zambia Country Office, will support the Ministry of General Education in institutionalizing the generation of the community, school, district and provincial profiles and in linking the profiles to other streams of the Ministry’s workflow, leading to sustainable generation and use of the profiles. The consultant will support the Ministry of General Education and the UNICEF Country Office in assessing the understanding and use of profiles in selected schools and support the preparations for the impact evaluation. The consultant will also provide some capacity building to the education section of the UNICEF Country Office on basic data handling, analysis and presentation skills.

The consultant will also support the Education section New York in updating and enhancing the data products focusing on the education status of disadvantaged adolescents. The tools will be updated to take into account more recent data sources and feedback from regional and country offices. The consultant will also be expected to complete additional tasks as determined on an ad hoc basis in response to the needs of the Education section.

Expected results: (measurable results)

The following results are expected by the end of the consultancy:

• The Zambian Ministry of General Education has a budgeted workplan on profile generation and dissemination
• The DMS impact evaluation firm has been contracted and the impact evaluation initiated
• An assessment of school and community profiles understanding and use at school level in Zambia undertaken
• Disadvantaged adolescents education status data analysis is completed. 

Duty Station

Lusaka, Zambia and New York 

Timeframe 

Start date: 21 August 2018, End Date: 21 December 2018              

Key competences, technical background, and experience required Deadline

• Advanced university degree in Social Sciences, with a major focus on international development, education, economics, or statistics.
• At least four years of work experience including at national and international levels in fields relating to stakeholder co-ordination, capacity building, and data analysis in the education sector.
• Experience of primary data collection in low-income/lower-middle income countries would be an asset.
• Extensive knowledge and experience in Excel, and a statistical software (SPSS, SAS or Stata).
• Demonstrated experience in working with UN agencies and governments would be an asset.
• Fluency in English (ability to write reports in clear and readable language) 

To view our competency framework, please click here. 

Please indicate your ability, availability and daily/monthly rate (in US$) to undertake the terms of reference above (including travel and daily subsistence allowance, if applicable).  Applications submitted without a daily/monthly rate will not be considered.

UNICEF is committed to diversity and inclusion within its workforce, and encourages qualified female and male candidates from all national, religious and ethnic backgrounds, including persons living with disabilities, to apply to become a part of our organisation.