Organisation: Bridge International Academies
Duty Station: Kampala,
Uganda
Bridge International
Academies is the world’s largest and fastest-growing chain of primary and
pre-primary schools with more than 400 academies and 120,000 pupils in Kenya
and Uganda. We democratize the right to succeed by giving families living in
poverty access to the high-quality education that will allow their children to
live a very different life. We leverage experts, data, and technology in order
to standardize and scale every aspect of quality education delivery, from how
and where academies are built to how teachers are selected and trained, and how
lessons are delivered and monitored for improvement. We are
vertically-integrated, tech-enabled, and on our way to profitability. Bridge
expects to continue rapid expansion in East Africa, and will be launching
operations in Nigeria in September 2015, with India to follow in 2016.
Job Summary: The Academic Field Officer should be a former
(or current) schoolteacher who is very good at observation. Each day, you’re at a school. Mostly it’s at one of Bridge’s many
Academies, though sometimes it’s at a government school or a non-Bridge
low-cost private school. You’re the
‘eyes and ears’ of the Academic Team – a mix of experts at headquarters
creating teacher training, books, lessons, and so forth.
Key Duties and Responsibilities: There are 5
main tasks each day:
1. Observe 10
to 12 classes per day, and give them ratings, using Bridge’s particular
approach to feedback. You rate the
lesson itself (which comes from ‘headquarters’), the teacher, and the pupils. You write out a detailed description of what
happened.
That feedback
helps two groups of people back at headquarters. First, the Curriculum Directors learn about
strengths and weaknesses of the lessons themselves, so they can make changes. Second, the rest of the Academic Team notices
patterns by reading dozens of your ratings – and then gets to make changes to
teacher recruiting, teacher training, curriculum choices, etc. based on the
patterns you provide through observation. This is the most important function
of a Field Officer.
2. The
incumbent will also interview teachers, parents, and the school leader. We’re constantly trying to better understand
what is happening, and your interview notes help our team to make
decisions.
3. Third, you
observe little things that may be unique to a single academy.
For example,
perhaps one school leader has organized a well-attended revision session that
happens early each morning, and parents really like it. Or another academy recently had a robbery – and
you realize that there’s a procedure which could help all of Bridge such as
packages of books should be opened immediately by school leaders, lest thieves
think something valuable is inside like a television and steal it.
4. You notice
problems like pupils who don’t have the right books, or teacher computers that
don’t work properly.
5. Finally, you
sometimes shoot photos or video.
That’s a
typical day. However, a Field Officer
might also:
1. Be asked to
administer test or grade tests
2. Escort a
visitor and explain how Bridge is different from other schools
3. Observe a
new procedure – just to gauge if the new way is better than the existing
way. For example: What is parent
reaction to our redesigned Parent-Teacher conferences? Teacher reaction?
Academy Manager reaction? What are ways to improve it?
In sum, you
gather both quantitative and qualitative feedback that will help drive Academic
team decisions. Your daily visits, when
combined with those of other Academic Field Officers, help us improve the
academic program at Bridge, a little at a time.
Each day, you
send all of this back to the Academic Team (via email, Skype, etc).
Qualifications, Skills and
Experience:
·
The applicant must be a former teacher with a keen
eye for observing others. But that’s not
enough. The very act of visiting schools
and noticing ‘What works and what fails’ must be intellectually interesting to
you – a daily puzzle you want to solve each day. Otherwise, the work would get tiresome.
·
Effective writing and communication skills. And, you must be an effective interviewer –
able to get teachers, parents, pupils, and academy leaders to speak honestly to
you. Sometimes they will be nervous that if they share problems with you, it
could cause trouble, so you need to be reassuring.
·
Be a self-starter.
That means you don’t need a manager to motivate you. You’re always early
to work, work hard, no excuses, that sort of thing.
·
Willingness to receive professional feedback on how
to get better. In fact, you need to want that.
Some people don’t like when managers or colleagues tell them how to
improve. That’s not a good fit for
Bridge culture – at Bridge you need to actually seek out and ask people ‘How
can I do my job better?’
If you so desire
to join Bridge International Academies in the aforementioned capacity, please
Apply Online by Clicking on the link below
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