Supervisor, Schools 

Job locations: Nimba, Bassa & River Cess Counties

Bridge Liberia

In 2016, Liberia’s President and its Ministry of Education announced Partnership Schools for Liberia (PSL), an innovative public private partnership designed to transform the primary public education system. Eight education providers - with proven track records in delivering high-quality education - were paired with public primary schools across Liberia; while teachers remained on the Government payroll. After a change of  national Government, PSL became the Liberian Education Advancement Programme (LEAP). 

LEAP is now in its seventh year; supporting 300 schools overall across the country; within that we support over 81,575 students. Our schools are based in some of the most remote counties, such as Maryland in the south-east.

Government teachers have been re-trained, supported and equipped to succeed in the classroom. Four Independent Studies and Randomised Control Trials have  shown the efficacy of the programme. For us there was a statistically significant improvement in learning outcomes.  In a gold standard RCT, students supported in our programme were found to benefit by an equivalent of 2.5 years more of learning in just 3 years.

LEAP was designed to be self-sustaining once the Ministry of Education raises its education budget to $100 a child per year; until that moment it remains reliant on philanthropic support.

Today, we work across the country, in all of Liberia’s 15 counties, to ensure that all children have access to a high quality education and that Sustainable Development Goal 4 focussed on Quality Education becomes a reality for all children in Liberia. 

You will join a group of dynamic and passionate Liberians taking concrete action to help address the education crisis in Liberia and ensure a better future for the children of Liberia.

Schools

Schools is the heart of our work. The team is mandated to inspire teachers to teach with passion, pupils to learn with purpose, parents to believe in a better future for their children, and communities to become the change they want to see in the world. To achieve this vision, the team ensures schools are smoothly run - the school team is motivated and inspired, delivering life changing lessons, creating an experience that makes parents stay with us, and also cultivating interest and excitement in our work in communities where we serve. Schools is responsible for ensuring all of the work created by our expert teams, including Instructional Design, Leadership & Development, Technology, Communications, Creative and Insight, are used in each school, and each school is managed to achieve its goal of ensuring every child enjoys a learning environment that develops her core skills, knowledge and confidence. The performance of the entire organization is led by the Schools Group, which is responsible for day-to-day management of each school. Schools works to strengthen school enrollment and student retention, ensuring every school is regarded as the strongest school in its neighborhood and delivers on improved learning outcomes for children and earns the trust of the parents. We engage with school leaders and teachers every day, ensuring ongoing professional development, performance management, and intensive coaching. We are always seeking effective ways of ensuring every school is supported with data-driven practices. We measure our success through both the financial sustainability of the school and the learning outcomes of the children in the classroom. We are performance driven.

About the Role

Each Schools Supervisor is responsible for the professional development, including ongoing performance management of school staff. As a Schools Supervisor, you are in schools each day, providing ongoing mentorship, specific performance feedback, and on-going group and personal training to teachers and school leaders. In this role, you also engage with all stakeholders of the schools under your care.  This may include government officials, parents, and community groups. Your role is the nexus of all that we do, ensuring the implementation and results of our overall programing, integrating school management, leadership & development of school staff, instructional design and technology. Using big data that provides a visibility into everyday teaching practices and school management, you work with school staff to improve performance – with the goal of student performance and character development in mind – and provide feedback on core programming to our design teams.

This team is laser focused on outcomes, inherently collaborative in nature, loves fostering leadership in others, is unwaveringly committed to ensuring a quality education for our pupils, and is excited about creating incredible learning interventions that drive positive behavior and mindset change in adults. You will flourish on this team if you are: a team player, hyper-focused on results, flexible in a dynamic environment, demonstrate integrity in all that you do, and have fun while working hard.

What You Will Do

• Be responsible for supervising the work of all school leaders in your assigned area, including aspects of School Management, and community and parent engagement. Ensure each school leader delivers on promise of learning and holistic development for children and has a strong and high-performing cohort of teachers;
• Use data from multiple sources, including your own classroom observations and school management observations, quality assurance audits, and big data on school staff behavior, to lead school staff to improve their practice, with an unwavering eye to student learning and holistic development.
• Use data from multiple sources to ensure effective school management, and a safe learning environment.
• Be in schools 90% time, observing teaching, management, and engaging with stakeholders, including government officials, parents, and community groups.
• When observing or holding meetings, use rubrics or other documents to support structured observation and reporting.
• Support specific school events, including collaborating on programming for such events as school opening celebrations, parent teacher conferences and school closing celebrations, as well as community showcases and participation on co-curricular competitions.
• Ensure school staff and students are prepared to sit in government-proctored exams, as they may occur on a termly/semester basis, and with particular attention to national examinations.
• Lead leadership & development sessions the course of the school year, and during induction training for new staff, using the materials and programming developed by the Leadership & Development team.

• Support schools through transition of staff, including of school leaders and teachers; work with local government and other local organizations as needed.
• Other duties as assigned

What You Should Have

• Proven community leadership experience, leading teams of people to accomplish an objective
• Experience in mentorship and coaching of youth and adults, either inside or outside of a school setting
• Teaching experience a plus
• Belief in data-driven decision making
• Relentless focus on achievement for yourself and others
• Bias towards action
• Flexible and loves to work in a dynamic environment
• Collaborative leader with strong relationship building skills
• Strong interpersonal skills
• Strong communication skills
• Undergraduate degree (or its equivalent) from a reputable university. Masters is an added advantage

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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