UNICEF, guided by the Convention on the Rights of the Child, works together with partners in 190 countries and territories to promote and advocate for the protection of the rights of every child.
At UNICEF, we are committed, passionate, and proud of what we do. Promoting the rights of every child is not just a job – it is a calling.
UNICEF is a place where careers are built: we offer our staff diverse opportunities for personal and professional development that will help them develop a fulfilling career while delivering on a rewarding mission. We pride ourselves on a culture that helps staff thrive, coupled with an attractive compensation and benefits package.
Visit our website to learn more about what we do at UNICEF.
For every child, commitment
In Nigeria, UNICEF works in a complex humanitarian and development setting to fulfill and protect children's rights in partnership with the government, civil society, children, and families. UNICEF Nigeria is one of the largest UNICEF Country Offices globally - click the link to learn more about UNICEF in Nigeria: https://www.unicef.org/nigeria/
Background:
Nigeria is home to approximately 206 million people, 43 per cent of whom are below 14 years of age. By 2030, there will be close to 126 million children in Nigeria. The growing child population places significant pressure on the provision of schooling and the delivery of education services. Despite the progress made in the past years, 10.2 million children at the primary level and 8.1 million at the junior secondary levels remain out of school. Lack of access to safe, quality, inclusive education impacts learning of children. Approximately 50 per cent of students in school cannot read or write, while only one in four children in Nigeria demonstrate foundational literacy and numeracy skills.
The COVID-19, which resulted in closure of schools for long periods, posed a further challenge in education in Nigeria. The pandemic in 2020 left an estimated 511,318 children and adolescents in 2,076 schools including early childhood care and development (ECCD) centres without access to learning. The Ministry of Education and Training (FME) in collaboration with UNICEF Nigeria and the Local Education Group (LEG) developed a sector specific COVID-19 Preparedness and Response Strategy to ensure the provision of learning during school closures: promote safe reopening of schools and ECCD centres; support teachers on accelerated teaching and learning; and conduct back to school campaigns. The primary funding to support this work came from the Global Partnership for Education (GPE).
Specific Objectives:
The consultant will support the deployment of NLP and strengthen the digital learning ecosystems in
Nigeria in collaboration with UNICEF Field Offices (FOs). Specific objectives are:
1) Internal and external coordination of digital learning programmes
2) Grant management
3) Government management capacity
4) Content development, management and quality assurance
5) Communication, advocacy, and stakeholder engagement
6) Monitoring, evaluation, and reporting
7) Other activities
How can you make a difference?
Scope of Work:
1) Internal and external coordination and grant management of digital learning programmes
• Participate in and contribute to internal and external digital learning coordination meetings at global, regional, country and state levels.
• Manage the grants with digital learning components to ensure that the projects are planned, implemented, monitored, and reported as scheduled. This includes NLP deployment and scaling with capacity building of state officers and teachers.
2) Government management capacity
• Provide support and capacity building to the Federal and State Ministries of Education to manage and coordinate programme implementation activities related to digital learning and NLP.
3) Content development, management and quality assurance
• Lead the development and launch of learning pathways on NLP to facilitate curricular-based learning using the content on NLP.
• Support FME to review and approve new content in NLP when needs arise.
4) Communication, advocacy and stakeholder engagement
• Coordinate communication, advocacy, and stakeholder engagement activities in collaboration with FOs to sensitize government officials, donors, private partners, schools, teachers, children and parents on NLP and digital learning management and use.
5) Monitoring and reporting
• Conduct regular monitoring and reporting on usage of NLP as well as NLP-related activities.
• Support the mid-year and end-year review and report.
6) Other activities
• Support the development of funding proposals and concept notes.
• Support the organization of seminars, conferences, and staff retreat, as well as programme mid-year
and end-of-year review.
Work Assignment Overview
Tasks/Milestone:
1) Coordination and grant management of digital learning programmes
Deliverables/Outputs:
1st biannual report/record of digital learning coordination meeting and grant management
2) Government management capacity
Deliverables/Outputs:
A record of 1st round of government capacity building
3)Content management and quality assurance
Deliverables/Outputs:
Learning pathway on NLP developed, launched and updated.
4) Communication, advocacy & stakeholder engagement
Deliverables/Outputs:
Materials of advocacy, communication and stakeholder engagement activities to promote digital learning and back-to-school campaigns.
If you would like to know more about this position, please review the complete Job Description here:
TOR for Digital Learning Consultancy.pdf
To qualify as an advocate for every child you will have…
Minimum requirements:
Advanced university degree in education, digital education, instructional design, information systems management, ICT management, computer science or other relevant fields.
A minimum of 8 years of experience in designing and implementing large-scale digital learning projects.
A minimum of 5 years of experience in developing / supporting instructional design, teacher competencies, e-learning materials and courses, and/or learning platforms, in context of digital teaching and learning.
Working experience in conducting a similar type of digital learning development and deployment projects (e.g., needs assessment, capacity building for administrators/users, promotion strategies, digital content management, device management, helpdesk, and/or monitoring/reporting).
Experience in supporting the deploying and/or managing Learning Passport, such as coordinating with the government to decide functions of platform, select content, support device procurement, develop partners for connectivity, and train teachers.
Knowledge in instructional design, e-learning platform configuration, and digital learning content, with experience in requirements engineering related to applications for children, educators and parents.
Experience in incorporating inclusive education strategies and/or universal design for learning (UDL) into technology-based learning solutions to improve accessibility to and use of digital learning platforms for children with disability.
Result-based project/programme management skills.
Experiences in working for UNICEF or UN agencies.
Understanding of West Africa context.
Fluency in English with strong written and oral skills.
For every Child, you demonstrate...
UNICEF's values of Care, Respect, Integrity, Trust, Accountability, Sustainability (CRITAS), and core competencies in Communication, Working with People and Drive for Results.
UNICEF is also proud of a diverse workforce who are profoundly committed to supporting the full realization of children’s rights, and in uplifting a rights-based approach in all that we do.
The UNICEF competencies required for this post are…
(1) Builds and maintains partnerships
(2) Demonstrates self-awareness and ethical awareness
(3) Drive to achieve results for impact
(4) Innovates and embraces change
(5) Manages ambiguity and complexity
(6) Thinks and acts strategically
(7) Works collaboratively with others
Click here to learn more about UNICEF’s values and competencies.
UNICEF promotes and advocates for the protection of the rights of every child, everywhere, in everything it does and is mandated to support the realization of the rights of every child, including those most disadvantaged, and our global workforce must reflect the diversity of those children. The UNICEF family is committed to include everyone, irrespective of their race/ethnicity, disability, gender identity, sexual orientation, religion, nationality, socio-economic background, minority, or any other status.
We offer a wide range of benefits to our staff, including paid parental leave, breastfeeding breaks and reasonable accommodation for persons with disabilities. UNICEF strongly encourages the use of flexible working arrangements.
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 is committed to promote the protection and safeguarding of all children.
All selected candidates will, therefore, undergo rigorous reference and background checks, and will be expected to adhere to these standards and principles. 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, and selected candidates with disabilities may be requested to submit supporting documentation in relation to their disability confidentially.
Remarks:
Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted and advance to the next stage of the selection process.
Individuals engaged under a consultancy or individual contract will not be considered “staff members” under the Staff Regulations and Rules of the United Nations and UNICEF’s policies and procedures, and will not be entitled to benefits provided therein (such as leave entitlements and medical insurance coverage). Their conditions of service will be governed by their contract and the General Conditions of Contracts for the Services of Consultants and Individual Contractors. Consultants and individual contractors are responsible for determining their tax liabilities and for the payment of any taxes and/or duties, in accordance with local or other applicable laws.
The selected candidate is solely responsible to ensure that the visa (applicable) and health insurance required to perform the duties of the contract are valid for the entire period of the contract. Selected candidates are subject to confirmation of fully-vaccinated status against SARS-CoV-2 (Covid-19) with a World Health Organization (WHO)-endorsed vaccine, which must be met prior to taking up the assignment. It does not apply to consultants who will work remotely and are not expected to work on or visit UNICEF premises, programme delivery locations or directly interact with communities UNICEF works with, nor to travel to perform functions for UNICEF for the duration of their consultancy contracts.