MEAL Officer: MERP Learner Mentor Programme At CORUS International

About Us

CGA Technologies is an international consultancy firm, registered in the UK, with associated companies in South Sudan, Kenya, Sierra Leone, and Malawi; and also staff based in Somalia, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia.

Since 2011, we have worked to deliver national-scale, sustainable change in the fragile and/or poor countries where we operate; we specialise in doing that by increasing participation and achievement in education, through at-scale cash support to citizens, and by leveraging each to make the other more effective.

In projects in challenging contexts, our consultants provide or support strategy development, policy design and guidance, information systems and bespoke technology, and on-ground implementation and operationalisation. Our work allows funds and assurance to flow sustainably. We enhance basic service sectors to play their role in the fight against extreme poverty, in particular through effective use of data systems.

We applied this work in South Sudan where we created the South Sudan School Attendance Monitoring System (sssams.org), which supported an increase of enrolment of school children from 0.9m to 2.7m between 2013 and 2021. This system monitors pupil and teacher attendance, and allows payment and salary incentives to flow to them and their schools. In Sierra Leone, we designed and developed the Human Resources for Health in Sierra Leone system (hrhsl.org), which ensures health worker attendance and delivery of services. In Malawi, we apply this in our work on the Social Cash Transfer Programme, supporting 300,000 of Malawi’s most vulnerable households.

In October 2019, Charlie Goldsmith Associates (CGA) became part of the Corus International multi-sector family, led by Lutheran World Relief-IMA World Health, and we later rebranded as CGA Technologies.

The Role

The Government of Malawi with funding from World Bank will be embarking on the implementation of a project called Malawi Education Reform Programme (MERP). The expected implementation period of the project is 4 years. The Project Development Objective (PDO) is to improve learning environments for students in lower primary in government schools. CGA, under a consortium led by Save the Children, is recruiting an M&E Officer, in anticipation of a successful proposal to support this work.

The Project Development Objective consists of five components which focus on improving the learning environment in lower primary schools, targeting the most disadvantaged schools and students, as well as an emergency contingent component which can be triggered to prevent or manage a resurgence of COVID-19 in schools or any other emergency, as defined in the Financial Agreement (FA).

The consortium will support in the implementation of the Learner Mentor sub-component of Component 3 of the Programme. The objective of the Learner Mentor sub-component is to support the development, piloting and scaling-up of an adapted Learner Mentor intervention. Girls achieve lower learning outcomes at all stages of primary school, diverging from boys as early as Grade 4. Though Malawi has achieved gender parity in enrolment in primary school, girls are falling behind boys in terms of test scores and primary school completion. Levels of female drop-out are high (especially in rural areas and the South) and as a result, girls are less likely than boys to complete both primary and secondary education. Component 3 supports a range of activities to raise the learning achievement for all learners in schools, including supporting female learners and improving the numbers of female teachers in schools in remote areas.

Therefore, the Learner Mentor Programme which the consortium will implement will mainly focus on ensuring that learning achievements for all learners, particularly female learners are improved. This will be achieved through hiring, training and supervision of Learner Mentors (promising local female secondary school leavers), following up on girls learning based on data and liaising with school leadership and female teachers as needed to support girls’ learning.

The consortium will work with DEOs, schools and communities to address barriers to girls’ education. School based clubs will be created and supported to provide safe spaces for all students, particularly girls, to share and discuss concerns and provide mutual support. The consortium will also be engaging with relevant persons on the ground to help facilitate gender-focused activities. The Learner Mentor will also support in the delivery of Life Skills and Social Studies in Standards 1 to 4 and provide club based well-being lessons for approximately 2-3 hours per week.

We are seeking an experienced individual who has excellent organizational and technical skills, a team player, dedicated, hardworking, innovative, highly motivated and able to work in a high-pressure environment requiring multi-tasking abilities.

The MEAL Officer will be responsible for providing technical leadership on Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability and Learning to the Learner Mentor programme consortium comprising Save the Children, FAWEMA, Press Trust and CGA Technologies. The MEAL Officer will work with the Team Leader and the programme Officer focussing on increasing the ability to demonstrate the impact of the consortium in meeting the requirements of Learner Mentor activity within the MERP component 3 (value for money), to coordinate production of key information products, data management (based on the MEAL Framework) to ensure that effectiveness of information flows as well as improving on impact based programme reporting.

Reporting to: Project Director

KEY AREAS OF ACCOUNTABILITY:

A. Technical Leadership

• Lead on strategic planning on MEAL with partner M&E staff to achieve significant programme impact.
• Leadership in the management of a database relating to Learner Mentors in the two phases of the project and generating information for management decision making.
• Support strategic and operational decision-making for all MEAL matters with a high degree of judgement based on specific problem solving experience and a range of external and internal factors.
• Analyse and communicate all MEAL information to consortium partners & other relevant stakeholders especially Ministry of Education, Ministry of Local Government and the donor-World Bank.
• Coordinate collection and management of data and other key programme information from partners and other stakeholders for use by the programme
• Enhance the capacity of partners and staff on monitoring, evaluation, accountability and learning systems through mentoring and formal training.

B. Ensuring Programme Quality (Design and implementation)

• Work with the Team Leader to draft the project’s reporting format for the approval of the MoE
• Ensure that the consortium delivers on all internal and external MEAL requirements in a timely manner and with high quality information.
• Strengthen MEAL systems and processes to assure achievement and progress towards project objectives and outcomes.
• Ensure that there is continuous verification of Learner Mentors in the two phases of the project to minimise inclusion and exclusion errors.
• Ensure that there is continuous verification of the availability and proper use of the Learner Mentor phones throughout the lifespan of the project.
• Assist in the development of outcome and learning/programme monitoring indicators for logframe and other purposes.
• Ensure that data collection and management methodologies used at field level are standardised, enabling the specific learning outcome gains for girls to be captured and analysed.
• Ensure that there is an agreed MEAL framework for the project and that it is being used to demonstrate project impacts by partners.
• Work with partners to ensure that they are collecting information on all agreed programme indicators and reporting on these agreed indicators
• Support programme teams and partners with project assessments/evaluation planning, ensuring that minimum criteria for quality evaluations and assessments are integrated into design and implementation.
• Ensure that all assessment/evaluation reports meet the GPE-MERP quality criteria, and promote the integration of recommendations and lessons learnt in project planning and future programming.
• Undertake field visits to project sites; work with implementation teams to understand impacts, operational challenges, and continuously identify opportunities for learning and improvement.
• Contribute to organisational learning on Learner Mentorship ensuring that learning from the project is shared across the Country Office and our partners.

C. Networking and External Engagement

• Ensure that lessons learnt from the project are regularly shared with DEC Members to improve practice

BEHAVIOURS (Values in Practice)

Accountability:

• holds self-accountable for making decisions, managing resources efficiently, achieving and role modelling Save the Children values
• holds their team and partners accountable to deliver on their responsibilities – giving them the freedom to deliver in accordance with the context, 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 professional 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 national and even regional scale.

Collaboration:

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

Creativity:

• Contribute to development of and innovative solutions

Integrity:

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

The post holder must commit to work in an international agency that promotes diversity, equity and inclusion and fights racism, gender inequality and discrimination in all forms; and to model positive behaviours that demonstrate a commitment to equality and respect to all colleagues, partners and communities.

QUALIFICATIONS

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Statistics, Demography or related field

EXPERIENCE AND SKILLS

• At least 5 years’ experience of working in the field of gender.
• Minimum of 3 years in delivering MEAL functions e.g. designing, maintenance of databases and development of tools
• Experience working with government is an added advantage.

KEY COMPETENCIES (Indicative / Key Competencies)

Technical competencies:

• Drives Quality Education Programming: Trains and mentors others on the application of relevant education sector standards
• Understanding of the importance of gender sensitive/transformative and inclusive education pedagogies and policies in education programming and learning outcome: Engages in safe schools and inclusive education approaches
• Able to build integrated multi sectoral education programmes: Builds the capacity of others to design and implement integrated education development and advocacy programmes
• Able to link local to national level advocacy efforts, supporting localisation of change and influencing national policy development

Generic Competencies

• Being the Voice of Children: Promotes evidence-based policy and public engagement that includes the voices of children and their communities
• Advancing Equality & Inclusion: Displays a commitment to ensuring everything we do considers the most deprived and marginalised children
• Building & Strengthening Partnerships: Promotes working with diverse partners as critical to delivery
• Child Rights: Promotes the rights of children in own work and in work with colleagues and peers.