Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning Associate
Rising Academies, Rwanda
Job Description
The context:
Across the developing world, more children than ever are in school but they are not learning. A recent study estimated that less than 1% of school children in Sub-Saharan Africa attend a school where the teaching meets basic standards of quality. At Rising Academies, we’re changing that, and we want your help. Our mission is to create the best schools and the most powerful teaching and learning tools for the people that need it most. We’re one of the fastest-growing quality-focused education companies in Africa, and a Certified B Corp.
About us:
We own and operate our own great value private schools, partner with governments to improve the quality of public school systems, and use our content and technology to help other education providers. Founded in Sierra Leone in 2014, we provided emergency education to children kept out of school by the Ebola Epidemic before opening our first school in April 2015. Today, we serve more than 250,000 students across more than 900 schools in Sierra Leone, Liberia, Ghana and now Rwanda.
Through great curriculum, intensive teacher coaching and actionable data, we help teachers and school leaders bring quality to every classroom. And we get results: independent studies show Rising students make more than twice the progress of their peers in comparable schools.
We have recently closed our Series A funding round and won a multi-year, multi-million dollar grant to accelerate the development of our digital ed-tech solutions for low-income students across the globe. Our ‘Bambai’ suite of digital tools already includes a school information system, school observation tool, chatbot tutor, accelerated learning program and teacher coaching app. This is just the start. We want to expand our range of digital products to help improve the quality of education for millions of students around the world. If you want to make a difference to the lives of teachers, students and parents, then we are the right place for you.
About the role:
We are seeking an ambitious, motivated and highly organized Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning (MEL) Associate to join our team in Rwanda. This role will lead MEL data collection and analysis efforts and provide project staff with timely and accurate data to monitor and gather feedback on the implementation of the Elimu Soko project.
The MEL Associate will:
Manage the data collection platform
- Build expertise in the mobile data collection platform including data exports, phone installation, and data syncing
- Download data from CommCare on a regular basis and as needed for special analysis
- Import data into google sheets and regularly clean data
Generate data reports
- Generate regular reports for project staff and stakeholders to monitor data both quality and project implementation
- Identify data irregularities, diagnose the data quality issues, conduct investigations and make necessary corrections
- Build data dashboards (in Google Data Studio) to enable efficient analysis of collected information
- Prepare summary statistics to allow us to track improvement in performance across our schools
Support School Staff with Data Collection
- Provide phone and in-person support to school staff as required
- Provide regular reminders and follow ups to ensure all data is submitted on-time
Location and reporting:
This is a full-time on-site position. The post is based in Kigali, Rwanda. The MEL Associate will report to the Project Manager. This will be a 9-Month fixed-term, from November 2023 until July, 2024 with the possibility for an extension
Application deadline:
The target start date for this role will be November 15th, 2023.
Requirements
Qualifications and Experience:
- A minimum of 2 years of experience in a related field (data collection, research, finance). Strong preference for at least 5 years of experience
- Proficient Excel skills and ability to present data insightfully and clearly explain the meaning of it. Knowledge of Google Data Studio or any statistical software package is preferred (Stata, R, SPSS)
- Familiarity with data collection, survey design and survey coding (using CommCare, ODK, SurveyCTO, Kobo, or similar software)
- Familiar with basic statistics and econometric concepts and ability to use them appropriately
- Strong organizational and record keeping skills
- University level undergraduate degree
About You:
- You are a strong communicator, able to motivate, challenge and support your team members.
- You set high standards for yourself and others, and go the extra mile to get things done.
- You understand the contexts