School Support Officer Promoting Equality in African School Zambia Limited

Promoting Equality in African Schools (PEAS) is a nonprofit educational organization founded with a mission to expand access to sustainably delivered quality secondary education for all children in Africa by delivering direct education and supporting Governments to strengthen the wider system. PEAS Zambia constructs and runs schools; our aim is for all our schools to operate completely sustainably and independently of international aid or donor support. In providing access to students from poorer households we believe in a world where all children enjoy an education that unlocks their full potential.

PEAS Zambia seeks to engage an energetic and young Zambian to take up the role of School Support Officer.

Reporting to the School Network Senior Manager, as a School Support Officer (SSO) for the Copperbelt cluster of schools, you will play a pivotal role in the success of our school network. You will be delivering direct support and supervision, being accountable for improving their performance by working alongside our fantastic school staff.

This opportunity is both exciting and challenging as we seek to work towards solving one of the world’s biggest challenges: ensuring access to quality education for all. To be the right candidate, you need to be resilient and adaptable, not giving up when something does not improve or change immediately, but being energized to find ways to make that change happen.

Roles and responsibilities

1. School supervision
   • School impact: Accountable for driving performance across Access, Quality and Sustainability in the cluster, line managing the School Leaders of each school and sharing their goals.
   • School compliance: Ensure that schools are operating in accordance with PEAS and GRZ policies.
   • Performance management: Work alongside the School Network Senior Manager to deliver annual performance appraisals of school leaders.
2. School support
   • Build a strong positive cluster culture where all schools identify and are proud to be part of their cluster, promoting healthy relationships, collaboration and support to one another.
   • Deliver high-quality coaching to school leaders and training for teachers.
   • Coordinate all support from other teams within PEAS Country Office, ensuring that support is delivered when it is needed but is never a distraction from the key activity of educating our students.
   • Support school leaders to set, review, and implementing school improvement plans.
   • Support schools with teacher recruitment and deliver high-quality teacher inductions
   • Interpret and use school-level data to provide relevant and practical support to schools including how to use the functionalities of their School Information System effectively.
   • Conduct lesson observations alongside school instructional leadership teams and provide high-quality feedback and action steps that are routinely followed up.
   • Responsible for ensuring key communications are shared between the schools and country offices
   • Serve as the Child Protection Focal Person for their cluster, delivering child protection training in collaboration with School Focal Persons and leading investigations and case management in consultation with PEAS Zambia Safeguarding Officer.
3. Representing PEAS in our schools and communities
   • Attend all BoG meetings for all assigned cluster schools.
   • Identifying, inducting and training BoG members
   • Attend and speak at community and BoG community engagement activities.
   • Support school leaders with community engagement and marketing/enrolment activities
   • Will be an independent advisor for case management and principal or support investigator wherever a Child Protection, Adult Safeguarding, Anti-Corruption, or Staff Disciplinary concern arises.
4. Inspections
   • Uphold PEAS’ standards through the PEAS inspection process, and act as a confidential and independent quality assurer alongside the School Network Support Manager.
5. Line Management
   • Build a strong team spirit aligned with PEAS values and culture; offering leadership, motivation and support for employee development
   • Set clear goals and high expectations of those that you line manage, hold regular 1-2-1s to discuss progress towards goals and carry out annual progress reviews in line with the PEAS annual progress cycle
   • Recognise and encourage the strong performance of team members and address poor performance effectively and efficiently.
6. Wider impact
   • Reserve 10% time to work on special projects which can benefit the whole school network (e.g Livelihood project; pedagogy review project)
   • Support School Network Senior Manager to champion PEAS with local governments; engaging with key players such as DEBS/PEOS to build strong relationships, raise awareness and share PEAS approach.
   • Upon occasion, work with the PEAS Zambia Senior Partnerships Manager and/or UK Technical Team to share PEAS expertise with external organisations and/or deliver a project to support a partner organisation

Who we are looking for

The candidate

Has:

1. A bachelor’s degree in Education from a recognised university
2. Minimum of two years experience serving as a school leader
3. Experience in working with complex stakeholder groups in low-income settings
4. Experience in managing budgets
5. Background knowledge of safeguarding practices
6. Proven track record of improving educational outcomes in low-resource settings.
7. Proven track record of successfully delivering training to school leaders and teachers

Can:

• Develop people through coaching and mentoring; supporting others to be high performing
• Make difficult and timely decisions to ensure that PEAS’ vision and approach are achieved
• Build credibility as a champion of excellent teaching and learning
• Confidently communicate clearly and concisely verbally and in written form in both English and Bemba, drawing out and communicating salient points
• Successfully influence, motivate and get the best out of people both within and outside of a line management relationships
• Confidently analyse, interpret school data and use it to inform school support
• Confidently use workplace technology and able to help others adopt new technology solutions
• Manage and interpret budgets
• Spend up to 30% of their time in the field.

Should be:

• Passionate about improving the life chances of all children through educational opportunities.
• Great manager; providing strong people management to drive high performance and/or committed to becoming a great manager
• Entrepreneurial, challenging the status quo of ‘this is how things are done and being open and proactive in trying new ideas to deliver impact
• Adaptable, approaching uncertainty with positivity and resilience
• Collaborative not competitive, working with peers in different teams across the organisation and externally to achieve shared objectives
• Embrace constant improvement, take ownership of your own development and empower others to do the same

Desirable criteria

• Strong understanding of school governance structures in Zambia and/or previous experience in school governance
• Desire to learn and quickly build knowledge of international best practices across pedagogy, assessment, teacher and leader training and development.
• Experience in advocacy and external influencing
• In-depth knowledge of the rural context in Zambia and community dynamics

NOTE: The deadline for applications is Tuesday, April 26, 2022. 17:00hrs