Job Description

Job Title: Project Associate – Foundational Learning - District Project Management Units (DPMUs), Telangana

Organization: Central Square Foundation

Department: Foundational Literacy and Numeracy (FLN)

Location: Medchal-Malkajgiri/Kodangal, Telangana

Central Square Foundation:

Founded in 2012, Central Square Foundation (CSF) is a non-profit philanthropic foundation working on the vision of ensuring quality school education for all children in India. We are driven by our mission to transform the school education system with a focus on improving children's learning outcomes, especially in low-income communities.

Learn more about CSF by visiting our Website

About the team:

Founded in 2012, Central Square Foundation (CSF) is a non-profit philanthropic foundation working on the vision of ensuring quality school education for all children in India. We are driven by our mission to enable the school education system to adopt solutions that are scalable, sustainable, and effective so that all children get equal access to opportunities needed for leading a better life.

Learn more about CSF by visiting our Website

About Foundational Learning at CSF

The Foundational Learning team at Central Square Foundation supports the States and Districts in designing and implementing the initiatives to achieve improved FLN learning outcomes for children.

We collaborate with Governments at State and District to:

• Support the design and implementation of comprehensive Foundational Learning Missions aligned with NIPUN Bharat
• Strengthen teacher capacity, academic design, and monitoring systems to improve classroom practice
• Build district and state delivery capacity through Project Management Units (PMUs)
• Leverage data and technology for evidence-based decision-making and targeted interventions

Roles and Responsibilities of the Project Associate:

• Project Associates shall work closely with the District administrations of Medchal-Malkajgiri / Kodangal district in creating and implementing detailed District Action Plan (DAP), collaborate with District Education Officers, Academic Monitoring Officers & District Resource Persons to enhance the processes and strengthen existing inputs of the FLN Mission, such as the use of Teaching Learning Materials, effective Teacher Professional Development & mentoring, dissemination of communication campaigns, and the effective monitoring systems as part of measuring outputs/outcomes.

• Conduct school visits on a regular basis in the district.

• Conduct small-scale pilot interventions (which are not part of the

  existing inputs) in the district to solve complex problems or problems

  specific to the district.

• Align district-level strategies and interventions with the overarching

  goals and directives of the state FLN mission.
• Work closely with Middle management (Mandal Education Officers and Cluster Head Masters) and to build their capacity to provide support to teachers and review project progress.
• Ensure state level governance structures (like review meetings) cascade effectively and function well at the district, block and cluster level.
• Collaborate closely with the state team to ensure coherence and integration of efforts, sharing insights and progress updates regularly.

Other key responsibilities include, but are not limited to:

Providing efficiencies to implementation

• Deeper and grassroot-level diagnostic of “WHAT and WHY of the gaps”

  and problem-solving
• Ground level feedback

• Design and/or execute district/mandal level strategies/solutions

• Build local capacities for adoption and usage

• Conduct awareness campaigns/events on FLN across the

  schools/clusters/mandals/district

Data monitoring and Progress check

• Conduct field trials to get ground feedback on monitoring system, and

  work closely with District to fix the gaps
• Ensure consistent data collection, develop and maintain the Management Information System (MIS), analyze data to generate insights, and drive actionable outcomes.
• Improve data quality & reliability including independent data collection on KPIs, conduct pilot studies aimed at improving the same

Pilot Projects to test innovative models

• Implement pilot projects and test models for community/parental engagement
• Implement pilot projects and test solutions on key challenges such as MGML
• Design and rollout to modules for capacity building of stakeholders (teachers/ mentors)
• Design and implement interventions that promote holistic development in children.

Documentation & Reporting

• Prepare timely and accurate reports, documenting the

  program progress, achievements, challenges, and financial utilization

• Document the quantitative and qualitative impact/outcomes of each

  and every intervention at the district level

The Project Associates will execute projects to stabilise outputs across FLN workstreams with the goal to improve process KPIs and learning outcomes

Required Qualifications, Skills and Abilities

• Bachelor’s degree; a Master’s degree preferred (in education,

  management, development studies, public policy, and social sciences)

• 0-2 years of work experience preferably in the education sector

  demonstrating remarkable project delivery and stakeholder

  management

• Demonstrated skills in data and measurement (quantitative and

  qualitative), including design of tools and strategies for data

  collection, data visualisation, drawing analysis and insights, and

  reporting and presentation

• Prior experience working with state and district-level governance and

  institutional structures is highly desirable

• Ability to undertake field travel (schools, clusters, mandals) for atleast

  15 days in a month

• Keen interest in the Development/Education sector

• Fluent in both Telugu and English with excellent written and oral

  communication skills

• Knowledge and experience in project management, including large

  scale program implementation with multiple delivery tracks and monitoring

• Strong skills in stakeholder management, problem-solving, and

  analytical thinking

• Proven ability to thrive in ambiguous and evolving environments

Compensation

Remuneration will be competitive with Indian philanthropy pay scales and will depend upon the candidate’s experience levels.