Academic Innovation Manager Job Vacancy in Nairobi, Kenya

Job Title:    Academic Innovation Manager
Job Location:    Nairobi, Kenya
Employer:    Bridge International Academies

About Us
Bridge International Academies is the world’s largest chain of primary and pre-primary schools bringing world-class education to the poorest of the poor, democratizing the right to succeed.

Bridge leverages research, technology, and data analysis in order to standardize and scale the entire lifecycle of high-quality education delivery and to drive continuous improvement across all aspects of operations.  This includes how academies are built, teachers are selected and trained, lessons are delivered and monitored for improvement, and more.  Bridge pupils score an average of 35% higher on core reading skills and 19% higher in maths than their peers in neighbouring schools based on USAID-designed exams administered by an independent monitoring and evaluation company.  Thanks to economies of scale, Bridge is able to charge just $6 a month per pupil on average with academies reaching operational sustainability after just one year.

The first Bridge International Academy opened in the Mukuru slum in Nairobi, Kenya in 2009.  Today there are hundreds.  New academies are opening at a rate of one every 2.5 days.  With a mission of Knowledge for all, Bridge plans to educate 10,000,000 children across a dozen countries by 2025.

Roughly 2.7 billion people live on less than $2/day.  In their communities, there is a huge gap between the education offered and the needs of the population.  Too often the schools available to them fail.  The quality offered is poor, teachers are unresponsive and occasionally abusive, and fees are expensive.  Even “free” government schools can cost anywhere between $2 and $12 per month after all of the additional fees (some sanctioned, some not) are added up.  55% of families end up choosing private schools instead, but then fear for the stability and sustainability of their choice as many schools close after only a few years of service.  Both the government schools and the private schools tend to lack well-conceived curriculum, student achievement data, and the capacity to react to that data.

Families are actively searching for a better academic alternative.

Enter Bridge International Academies.  As of January 2014, Bridge is operating 259 academies, serving roughly 80,000 pupils, in Kenya.  In 2015 we'll open schools in Nigeria, Uganda, and India.

Bridge utilizes a scripted-learning education methodology coupled with 'big data' (all teachers have tablets for instruction, assessment, and data-gathering) that allows us to make curriculum a little better every day.

With plans to enroll ten million students  ten years from now, Bridge International Academies offers a tremendous opportunity to grow with one of the world’s most exciting, ambitious, and socially conscious companies, with leadership roles available across a number of competencies and geographies.

Job Overview
We are looking an unusual educator to join our current guy, named Geordie.  Who is awesome.  The job is figuring out how Bridge can get better -- at things large and small.  Curriculum.  Technology.  Peer tutoring.  Teacher coaching.  Parent-teacher meetings.  And so forth.  Each day you're in a Bridge academy, plugging away at an innovation or system, failing fast.  Once you've figured out a 'better' way, you try it at a second Bridge school, and maybe a third.  If your new way really works, we scale it to all 259 academies. 
 
The Innovation Managers aren't dreamers. They are the practical, hands-on, testers of ideas in real life at a single school, folks with great judgment, who know the tiny details typically make or break each idea.   They troubleshoot the dozens of small but thorny unanticipated challenges that arise whenever something new is tried. 

Job Requirements:
An Innovation Manager must be not only be a strong teacher, but also an unusually great observer (Geordie was a journalist as well as a teacher), who loves working with teachers, students, parents, and staff to try new ideas and solve thorny challenges.

In addition, an Innovation Manager must:    

•     Be a self-starter (much of this work is solo)
•     Be results-oriented (someone who enjoys failing a lot, doesn't mind that, so long as the failure happens fast and ultimately leads to success...NOT the type of person who falls in love with his or her ideas)
•     Understand 'No Excuses' schools like KIPP (The developing world doesn't have many outlier open-admission, high-poverty schools that generate huge learning gains for kids; most of our team has experience in precisely those types of schools)

The Innovation Manager will be based in Nairobi, Kenya.  However, relocation to Uganda or Nigeria or India in the future would be an option.

Deadline Date: 14/06/2014

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