The posting
Role: Lead- Multigrade/Multilevel Teaching (Education),New Delhi Experience: 10+ Salary:17-20 LPA ____________________________________________________________________
About the role : We are implementing a multigrade project focused on strengthening teaching-learning practices in the early grades, with a particular focus on foundational learning, multigrade/multilevel classrooms, and evidence-based strategies that can be integrated into government systems at scale.
The Lead – Multigrade/Multilevel Teaching will provide overall academic leadership to the project. The role is responsible for ensuring the quality and coherence of the project's academic design and implementation across districts, supporting state and field teams, synthesizing evidence from classrooms, and translating learning from the pilot into practical resources, teacher development approaches, and recommendations for state-level scale and sustainability. The position manages a small team of academic specialists and works closely with state teams, field teams, academic partners, and government stakeholders.
Key Responsibilities
1. Strategic Leadership & Coalition Management
- Provide overall strategic direction for the coalition and translate its vision into annual priorities, workplans, milestones, and decision-making processes.
- Anchor the shared agenda across the coalition organizations and ensure alignment around evidence generation, demonstrations, learning, and policy advocacy.
- Lead strategic reviews, identify emerging issues, and ensure timely course correction.
- Oversee the coalition’s strategic plan and budget to ensure resources remain aligned with agreed priorities.
- Represent the organization and the coalition in high-level engagements with partners, government, donors, researchers, and other stakeholders.
2. Evidence, Research & Learning Agenda
- Lead the overall evidence agenda on the Grade 3–4 transition and Grade 4–5 learning, covering foundational literacy and mathematics, grade-level skills, academic language, and assessments.
- Provide strategic oversight to curriculum/textbook reviews, classroom-practice studies, vocabulary mapping, and Grade 4–5 assessments.
- Guide research design questions, study designs, and quality standards in collaboration with technical experts, research agencies, and internal research teams.
- Lead periodic evidence and learning reviews, ensuring findings directly inform programme decisions and policy messaging.
3. Grade 4–5 Instructional Model & Demonstrations
- Provide academic oversight to the development of the Grade 4–5 language and mathematics instructional model in consultation with experts.
- Ensure research findings directly inform instructional frameworks, teacher guides, workbooks, Teaching-Learning Materials (TLMs), assessment, and remediation approaches.
- Provide strategic oversight to two demonstrations in contrasting linguistic contexts to ensure they function as evidence-generating learning laboratories.
- Review implementation, classroom observation, assessment, and teacher-feedback evidence to lead Year 1 refinement of the model.
- Ensure documentation captures what works, what requires contextual adaptation, and what does not work, creating actionable evidence relevant for scale-up.
4. Technical Partnerships & Quality Assurance
- Lead strategic relationships with external research and technical partners, including experts supporting academic language, assessment, and multilingual instructional design.
- Provide direction to consultants and research agencies while reviewing major technical deliverables.
- Ensure external expertise is appropriately contextualized to Indian educational and linguistic settings and contributes to internal and coalition capacity.
- Maintain academic and methodological quality across research, assessment, instructional design, and demonstration evidence.
5. Government & Policy Engagement
- Lead the coalition’s national and state policy-engagement strategy with NCERT, SCERTs, Samagra Shiksha, and state education departments.
- Develop and articulate the coalition’s policy narrative on the Grade 3–4 transition, academic language, and Grade 4–5 learning.
- Lead senior-level consultations, workshops, roundtables, and dissemination events.
- Translate technical findings into clear, practical recommendations for curriculum, assessment, teacher professional development, and classroom instruction.
- Build relationships across multiple levels of government to sustain engagement through leadership changes.
- Lead advocacy for the adoption or adaptation of recommendations in at least three states and contribute evidence to NIPUN 2.0.
6. Knowledge Products & Thought Leadership
- Lead the synthesis of research and demonstration findings into policy briefs, technical notes, case studies, research summaries, and the Grade 3–4 transition/Grade 4–5 instructional playbook.
- Ensure knowledge products are rigorous, accessible, and relevant to policymakers and practitioners.
- Represent the coalition in national education forums, technical conferences, and other strategic platforms.
- Build the coalition’s credibility as a leading voice on Grade 4–5 learning, preparatory-stage pedagogy, and multilingual education.
7. Partner Capacity, Risk & Resource Management
- Build a culture of shared learning and accountability across coalition partners while identifying technical-capacity needs.
- Oversee technical learning sessions and expert workshops for partners.
- Maintain oversight of strategic risks related to government engagement, research quality, partner coordination, approvals, and implementation.
- Work with the Program Manager and finance/operations teams to monitor resource utilization, major contracts, and emerging requirements.
- Ensure the coalition remains on track against the June 2029 outcomes and milestones.
Qualifications & Experience
- Master’s degree or higher in Education, Development Studies, Public Policy, Social Sciences, or a related field.
- 15+ years of relevant professional experience, preferably in education, with substantial experience in research and/or programme leadership.
- Strong understanding of foundational literacy and numeracy, primary/preparatory-stage education, and instructional design.
- Demonstrated experience managing multi-state and/or multi-stakeholder initiatives and working directly with government education systems.
- Experience in research, assessment, evidence generation, or programme learning, accompanied by strong analytical and writing skills.
- Demonstrated ability to manage senior technical experts, consultants, and partner organisations, and translate evidence into actionable policy and program recommendations.
- Desirable: Experience in multilingual education, academic language, reading comprehension, mathematics education, or large-scale assessment.
Required Skills
- Strong stakeholder management and communication skills, with the ability to build trust and work effectively with field and central teams in English and Hindi.
- Strong problem-solving, analytical, and reporting skills, with the maturity to handle employee matters sensitively and confidentially.
- Field-oriented and self-driven, with a willingness to travel across states.
- Proficiency in Excel/Google Sheets, PowerPoint, and standard project-management tools.
- Ability to use AI tools effectively for academic and professional work.
Desired Qualities
- Ability to convert broad academic priorities into structured plans, activities, timelines, and measurable deliverables.
- Strong organizational and follow-up skills, with the ability to track multiple activities and ensure timely completion.
- Ability to manage multiple tasks and projects, coordinate across teams, and meet timelines effectively.
- Ability to work independently while collaborating effectively with state, central, and external teams.
- Passion for improving government school education and teacher professional development.
