VACANCY ANNOUNCEMENT
Organization: UNICEF
Position: Education Specialist- Secondary Education and Skills, P4-TA (364days), Kathmandu – Nepal
Job no: 531875
Position type: Temporary Appointment
Location: Nepal
Division/Equivalent: Kathmandu(ROSA)
School/Unit: Nepal
Department/Office: Kathmandu, Nepal
Categories: Education
UNICEF works in some of the world’s toughest places, to reach the world’s most disadvantaged children. To save their lives. To defend their rights. To help them fulfill their potential.
Across 190 countries and territories, we work for every child, everywhere, every day, to build a better world for everyone.
And we never give up.
For every child, Education
Job organizational context
South Asia has the largest number of adolescents in the world (more than 340 million, representing more than 30% of the total world adolescent population), and yet has the worst numbers of upper-secondary age out-of-school children in the world (64 million). In addition, South Asia is home to 28 million out-of-school-children (OOSC) of primary and lower-secondary age – 12 million at primary level, and 16 million at lower secondary level. A large majority of out-of-school adolescents have either never been to school or dropped-out of school too early to learn foundational skills. Only 1 in 4 young people in South Asia is estimated to be on track to gain secondary-level skills necessary for success in the global economy.
In line with the UNICEF Education Strategy, the second half of the Regional Office Management Plan provides an important opportunity to give a greater programmatic focus on the second decade, and in particular to scale-up alternative pathways for adolescents to receive education and skills to increase their preparedness for the 21st century labour market. A post is therefore required at the regional level to provide leadership and advocacy to accelerate progress in the region, responding to the global imperative and shift in the UNICEF Education Strategy.
The proposed position of Education Specialist, Secondary Education and Skills, will report to the Regional Education Adviser, but will also work very closely with the ADAP and Gender Advisers in ROSA.
How can you make a difference?
Secondary Education
- Provide leadership and technical guidance to country offices on the preparation, design and updating of the situation analysis for the adolescent education programmes to ensure that current and comprehensive data on education issues is available to guide UNICEF’s strategic policy, advocacy, interventions. This includes providing support for adolescent strategies in a variety of contexts: formal and non-formal education settings, Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET), targeting adolescents both in and out of school with multiple pathways, including in emergency contexts, not least during the COVID-19 response.
- Undertake regional analysis and research on the situation of adolescent education and skills, support sector specific analysis of data on adolescent education, support the evaluation of existing programmes to determine their effectiveness and recommend alternative education solutions that work best in the different contexts of the countries of the region, including emergency contexts.
- Provide technical contribution in strategic programme discussion on the planning of education programmes: support country offices to formulate, design and prepare programme proposals for the sector, ensuring alignment with UNICEF’s Global Education Strategy. Provide technical and operational support throughout all stages of programming processes and to ensure integration, coherence and harmonization of programmes/projects with other UNICEF sectors and achievement of results as planned and allocated.
- Engage with the Generation Unlimited Secretariat (Gen-U) at both RO and HQ levels to guide and support the operationalization of Gen-U in pilot countries, as well as develop strategies for engagement in others countries in the region.
Gender Equality and Equity in Education
- Support the Regional Education Adviser and the Gender focal point in ROSA to accelerate progress on gender equality in education within the region and provide support to COs in strengthening gender-responsive programming, in particular through ensuring the gender-responsiveness of Education Sector Plans and those components which relate to adolescence and skills.
- Support organizing and participating in advocacy events through mobilizing multi-sectoral partnerships and capacity development at regional and country level with a special focus on equity, gender and inclusion and promoting research, evidence building and good practices in these areas.
- Support the Gender focal point in ROSA to co-ordinate UNGEI and accelerate progress on Girls’ Education and gender in education within the region, including strengthening of partnerships with governments, UN agencies and other organizations working in the field of gender in education, in particular UN agencies, regional Asian bodies, key bilateral agencies and civil society organizations.
Skills
- Support and guide country offices to integrate skills within their programmes, aligned to the current Strategic Plan, linking with Skills experts in HQ: disseminate available resources, facilitate capacity development on skills within the region.
- Advise country offices and develop strategies to support integration of 21st century skills such as creativity, critical thinking and collaboration in formal and non-formal education, and Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET), including in emergency contexts, to prepare adolescents for 21st century jobs.
- Institutionalize and share best practices and available knowledge on skills integration, skills assessment, skills packages for multiple pathways of education including non-formal education, community-based education or emergency settings, and support evaluations of existing programmes when they occur.
- Collaborate across sectors to improve integrated emergency responses for adolescents focusing on skills, in particular skills for employability.
Strategic management, monitoring and delivery of results
- Plan and collaborate with internal colleagues at RO and COs to establish monitoring benchmarks, performance indicators and other UNICEF/UN system indicators to assess/strengthen performance accountability, coherence and delivery of concrete and sustainable results for adolescents.
- Participate in monitoring and evaluation exercises, programme reviews and annual reviews to assess progress and to determine required action/interventions to achieve results.
- Prepare and assess monitoring and evaluation reports to identify gaps, strengths and weaknesses in programme management. Identify lessons learned and use knowledge gained for planning adjustments and timely interventions to achieve goals.
Advocacy, networking and partnership building
- Build and strengthen strategic partnerships through networking and advocacy across region with local/national governments, UN system agency, partners, donors, internationally recognized institutions, NGOs, funding organizations, research institutes and private sector to reinforce cooperation and/or pursue opportunities to promote goals and achieve sustainable and broad results on education to promote the adolescent education agenda in the region.
- Collaborate closely with ADAP and C4D to develop modalities for adolescent and youth engagement as part of UNICEF’s increased commitment to work with and for young people.
- Serve as the regional Gen-U focal point, as well as the focal point in the Education Section for private sector engagement, in collaboration with the Business for Results (B4R) lead.
Innovation, knowledge management and capacity building
- Apply/introduce innovative approaches and good gender-responsive practices on adolescent education and skills to build the capacity of partners and stakeholders and to support the implementation and delivery of concrete and sustainable programme results.
- Explore non- traditional channels such as the use of T4D for delivery of education and imparting skills to adolescents and broker partnerships with the private sector to design, test, evaluate and scale up innovations for adolescent education.
- Keep abreast of research, benchmark and implement best practices on adolescent education and skills.
- Assess, institutionalize and share best practices and knowledge learned.
- Contribute to the development and implementation of policies and procedures to ensure optimum efficiency and efficacy of sustainable programmes and projects.
- Organize and implement capacity building initiatives to enhance the competencies of clients/stakeholders to promote sustainable results on related programmes/projects.
To qualify as an advocate for every child you will have…
• An Advanced university degree in one or more of the disciplines relevant to the following areas: Social Sciences fields relevant to international development assistance
• A minimum of 8 years progressively responsible professional work experience in education in general, with specific focus on adolescents and skills is required.
• Experience with programme planning, management and research in education at the international level, some of which preferably in a developing country, is necessary.
• Experience with addressing gender and other equity disparities is an asset.
• Experience in a UN system agency in the Education sector is considered an asset.
• Familiarity with the South Asian context as well as experience engaging with the private sector on education or innovations, is an asset.
• Fluency in English is required. Knowledge of another official UN language (Arabic, Chinese, French, Russian or Spanish) or a local language is an asset.
For every Child, you demonstrate…
UNICEF’s values of Care, Respect, Integrity, Trust, and Accountability (CRITA) and core competencies in Communication, Working with People and Drive for Results.
The competencies required for this post are…
• Builds Partnerships [I]
• Demonstrates self-awareness and ethical awareness [I]
• Drives to achieve result for impact [I]
• Innovates and embraces change [I]
• Manages ambiguity and complexity [I]
• Thinks and acts strategically [I]
• Works collaboratively with others[II]
UNICEF is committed to diversity and inclusion within its workforce, and encourages all candidates, irrespective of gender, nationality, religious and ethnic backgrounds, including persons living with disabilities, to apply to become a part of the organization.
UNICEF has a zero-tolerance policy on conduct that is incompatible with the aims and objectives of the United Nations and UNICEF, including sexual exploitation and abuse, sexual harassment, abuse of authority and discrimination. UNICEF also adheres to strict child safeguarding principles. All selected candidates will be expected to adhere to these standards and principles and will therefore undergo rigorous reference and background checks. Background checks will include the verification of academic credential(s) and employment history. Selected candidates may be required to provide additional information to conduct a background check.
Remarks:
Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted and advance to the next stage of the selection process.
Last date to apply: 10 June 2020
