Program Manager, Academics

Nairobi, Kenya

Bridge Kenya

Bridge Kenya is a life-changing community school program. It is one of four community school programmes run as part of NewGlobe’s education portfolio.

Bridge Kenya opened its first school in Nairobi’s Mukuru Kwa Njenga, in 2009. Now, it supports community schools across 43 of the 47 counties. Bridge Kenya partners with communities, parents and teachers to deliver life-changing education and provide a gateway to success for underserved families. 

Since 2015, Bridge Kenya’s national (KCPE) exam results have continued to prove academic excellence, significantly outperforming national averages. Community school graduates have gone to top secondary schools and universities; both within Kenya and the US.

Department

The objective of Academics is to drive student achievement. To do so, we consider each minute of each class period of each school day for the typical child, in every grade level. The student’s daily experience — her path to achievement — emerges from her relationship with the school’s teachers and the content that is shared with her.  Academics ensures that Schools have children’s learning at its core. Academics in each territory or program works with our shared services Academics Department, including Instructional Design and Learning Innovation.

Instructional Design, with a core focus on structured pedagogy, is one of our core levers to support teachers and to empower children to learn. With a relentless focus on improvement of learning at scale, Academics works with our Learning Innovation team to scientifically test improvements to our work. Academics works to ensure that we are deploying locally appropriate content aligned to the state or national syllabus; that we are carefully tracking the use of our instructional design materials and their efficacy; that we are evaluating the best use of the school day and school year; that we are measuring learning in each grade level, in each school; that we are preparing children to succeed in state and national exams; and that we support graduates transition into secondary school. We keep children’s learning and development as our focus. We never waver from our belief that every child can learn and that schools are the center of the social justice movement to end generational transfer of poverty.

About the Role

The Program Manager Academics will be ultimately responsible for optimizing the Primary School to Secondary School transition for every single Bridge pupil in their assigned territory.

As an individual contributor, the Program Manager, will ensure that our pupils – all of our pupils – are ready to take and excel in the high stake exams. This will include the implementation of individual and class level initiatives throughout the academic year aimed at preparing pupils for high stake exams.

As a collaborator, the Program Manager, will be responsible for coordinating with the Schools and Policy & Partnership team in the Secondary School transition for all pupils. This will involve scouting for Secondary School Scholarships from both Corporate and Non-governmental organisations, providing guidance to eligible pupils on the application and admission process and tracking the scholarship pupils throughout secondary school. 

Finally, as a Program Manager, you will ensure that all project trackers for individual and class level initiatives for preparing pupils for high stake exams are updated as well as Secondary school scholarship trackers.

What You Will Do

• Become an expert on the High Stake Exams – devour every exam and how it connects to the National Syllabus.
• Become an expert on High Stake Exam Preparedness: Conduct lesson observations in the high stake class, work with the Innovations team in running experiments aimed at improving pupils’ achievement in high stake exams, working with the L & D team in professional development for teachers preparing pupils for high stake exams.
• Secondary School Transition and Scholarship program: Become an expert on the Secondary School Admissions process in assigned territory aligned to the National curriculum in place, Scouting for Secondary Scholarships and Tracking Scholarship pupils throughout Secondary School.
• Think “Beyond High Stake Exams”- how are we setting up ALL pupils for success beyond Primary.
• Seek Leverage – Identify and Develop plans for implementing the highest impact initiatives and programs that drive performance on High Stake Exams.
• Execute Well – Oversee the planning of large-scale programming for High-Stakes Assessments across territory assigned.
• Collaborate effectively with other Bridge teams – Operations, People, Schools, Policy & Partnership
• Collaborate effectively with external partners.

What You Should Have

The Program Manager must be a data-driven individual with experience in High Stake Exams. You must be an expert in Secondary School Admissions who understands exceptional beyond High Stake Exams and can motivate and support pupils in excelling. Ideal candidates have worked in organizations with a proven track record of generating High Stakes Exams performance.

In addition, the Program Manager must:

• Be a self-starter and problem-solver.
• Be hard working and collaborative, with the tenacity to plow through challenges and an appreciation for teamwork toward achieving a shared vision.
• Be a fast learner and someone who is able to flourish in fast paced, dynamic, and sometimes ambiguous environments.
• Be both detailed and results-oriented, driven by the data that will allow us to know what is working and what isn’t working for kids.
• Have strong project management skills and excellent organizational skills, with keen attention to detail and ability to follow up systematically on a broad set of initiatives and decisions.
• Be an effective, articulate communicator who can represent Bridge to external audiences.
• Be humble and ready to “roll up your sleeves” to get things done.

Education and Qualification

●        Bachelor’s Degree in a related field.

●        Minimum of three years of teaching experience with proven track record of achieving high.

●        academic outcomes with pupils on high-stakes assessment.

●        Experience in a variety of International Contexts (particularly the ones in which Bridge operates) strongly preferred.

●        Management experience.

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.

How To Apply

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