People Matter

Associate, School Inspection

Bridge International Academies

Bridge International Academies

Nairobi, Kenya
Posted 6+ months ago

Bridge Kenya

Bridge Kenya is a community school programme that partners with parents, communities and teachers to provide life-changing education and gateway to success.

Bridge Kenya transforms lives and opens the door to a successful future for its pupils. Together with its teachers, school leaders, families and communities, it creates schools that deliver academic excellence, build the essential skills for success, and provide a caring, nurturing community that supports growth.

In 2009, Bridge Kenya opened its first school in Nairobi’s Mukuru Kwa Njenga. Since then we have iterated and innovated, building a transformative community school programme that is data-driven and evidence-based and accountable to families. We have re-engineered every part of the education system, from teacher training and support, to lesson delivery and design, construction, and administration; making community schools as effective and transparent as possible. Our success in Kenya has enabled us to create other community school programmes in Africa and beyond.

Since 2015, Bridge Kenya’s national (KCPE) exam results have continued to prove academic excellence, significantly outperforming national averages. Every year, tens of pupils from some of the most underserved communities in the country score 400+ in their KCPE with 1000s’ more scoring over 300 marks. Our Community school graduates have gone to top secondary schools and universities; both within Kenya and the US. These graduates continue to excel in various top national secondary schools in Kenya including Maranda High, Starehe Boys, Alliance Girls, Pangani Girls and MPESA Foundation. In addition, some of our first cohort of pupils are now in top universities including Nairobi University, Kenya and Amherst College in the US.

Outside of the classroom, our pupils participate in extracurricular activities such as debates and sports to help them build confidence, teamwork skills and independence. They continue to prove their co-curricular prowess – with schools competing at the national level co-curricular competitions every year and participating in East Africa regional competitions.

We are not just a community school programme, every day we work to transform lives. We are nurturing children holistically, by empowering teachers and teaching pupils to be disciplined and confident using positive behavioural techniques and approaches. These traits empower pupils to lead and a successful future long after they graduate.

Our community school programme has a long legacy of success and has opened the door to opportunities that many of our pupils and their families could never have imagined.

A quality education has the power to transform the opportunities for Kenya’s children. In joining us, you will join a group of dynamic and passionate Kenyan’s taking concrete action to help ensure a better future for the children of Kenya.

Operations

The Operations team is responsible for the execution, and management of the entire sequence of processes required to service the activities of each school, and to provide that support at scale in the most cost efficient and effective way possible. It is the nerve centre of the work that is done in any region, and is the interface that brings all school-level support functions together through it's different departments - Resolution Team, Revenue Assurance, Facilities and Supplies, Instructional Oversight, School Inspection, IT Operations, and Supply Chain. The Operations leadership is responsible for providing overall leadership to the team, through the supervision of all routine tasks, coordination between all teams, oversight of all systems, processes, and data capturing, and ensuring that the work done by the team is done in the most efficient and cost effective way possible to enable us to better service our parents and government partners, provide a better experience for our employees, and a stable platform on which we continue to scale our work.

School Inspection

School Inspection is the auditing function of our school operations (facilities, materials & supplies, personnel and processes) against our set of standards and policies to ensure all schools maintain an environment where teaching and learning thrive. School Inspection ensures compliance with procedural requirements through frequent school observation visits and audits of school operations. Program managers use the data School Inspection collects and audits to uphold a consistent service level standard at each school. Managers also use School Inspection data to validate the data collected from other sources and used by other teams. We have established high standards for our many schools. Ensuring these standards are maintained across every single school is integral to the success of our model.

About the Role

You will be part of a highly-trained field team monitoring team focusing on systematic school-level monitoring. We aim to impact teaching and learning, so we need to deliver high quality data to decision makers at all levels of the organisation & to our government partners. School Inspection ensures that we have accurate knowledge of what is happening in schools by auditing all school management work to ensure compliance with our school protocols.

Your work will involve visits to assigned schools to collect data using survey forms, and where possible supporting the school leader and teachers to troubleshoot problems so that learning is not disrupted at a school.

The role requires someone who has a strict code of integrity. We are looking for an energetic and motivated tech-savvy individual willing to contribute his or her skills to the team to make the School Inspection team even more successful. The Associate, School Inspection is passionate & a relentless advocate for our vision of democratising the right for all children to acquire high quality life changing education.

You will report to the school inspection manager.

What You Will Do

  • Make daily visits to two or more schools (implement the route plan and cluster assignment) to conduct audits of school operations, management tools, materials and processes and populate findings through a digital survey form
  • On a daily basis, record and then submit reports including recommendations, on all issues that do not comply with expected standards and respective policies that are observed while at schools to your line manager so as to ensure that parties responsible for resolving the issues act in a timely manner.
  • Work together with the Support Office to ensure that school management and established monitoring systems and tools are well implemented and maintained as per desired standards at individual schools by the school leaders and teachers and teachers.
  • Expect to work Monday-Saturday and in some unique cases Sunday.
  • Expect to work with new requests evolving within departments as stipulated by the company.
  • Additional activities: Assist other departments such as Schools, IT, Academics and Operations in data collection activities and investigations they need field support on.

What You Should Have

  • A minimum of a 2-year Diploma or field experience in data collection in lieu of a diploma.
  • Tech-savvy: comfortable using smartphones, tablets, email and able to manoeuvre through mobile IT systems/applications
  • Strong observational and record-keeping skills, detailed and keen to generate high-quality data (willing to clearly indicate when something is not being done correctly)
  • Impartial - Able to "stand his/her ground" and not be convinced by any party (e.g. Head Teachers, teachers) to alter the audit findings/information.
  • Highly flexible to dynamic work requirements and deliverables including willingness to travel and relocate within the country when required as per job requirements
  • Physically capable and comfortable with working long hours at the field including visiting remote locations and exposure to seasonal outdoor conditions.
  • Mature and able to work independently and effectively - supervision will largely be done from the Support Office while you operate in the field.
  • Malleable learner that’s able to work under pressure and stringent deadlines
  • Excellent interpersonal, organisation and communication skills - both oral and written
  • Problem solving and solution seeking skills will be essential along with a “can-do” attitude.

You’re also

  • A detailed doer – You have a track record of getting things done. You’re organized and responsive. You take ownership of every idea you touch and execute it to a fine level of detail, setting targets, engaging others, and doing whatever it takes to get the job done. You can multi-task dozens of such projects at once and never lose sight of the details. Likely, you have some experience in a start-up or other rapid-growth company.
  • A creative problem-solver – Growing any business from scratch comes with massive and constant challenges. On top of that, Bridge works in often fragile, sometimes volatile low-resource communities and with complex government systems. You need to be flexible and ready to get everything done effectively, quickly, and affordably with the materials at hand.
  • A relentless advocate – The children we serve and teachers we empower never leave your mind. You know them, get them, have shared a meal with them (or would be happy to in the future). You would never shrink back from shaking a parent’s hand or picking up a crying child, no matter what the person was wearing or looked like. Every decision you make considers their benefit, experience, and value.
  • A malleable learner – You believe you can always do better. You welcome constructive criticism and provide it freely to others. You know you only get better tomorrow when others point out where you’ve missed things or failed today.
  • A data-driven decision-maker – When making decisions, you don’t rely on your intuition alone. You collect data, you analyze it and make decisions with clear justifications.
  • A curious investigator – You ask why a lot. You don’t just take what you see and accept it. You wonder why it is that way, and are aware that the world we see is created by human choices and actions – and it could be different. You wonder, and see the world as wonderful even when you want to change a part of it that is unjust.

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