Description
Do you want to build a career that is truly worthwhile? Working at the World Bank provides a unique opportunity for you to help our clients solve their greatest development challenges. The World Bank is one of the largest sources of funding and knowledge for developing countries; a unique global partnership of five institutions dedicated to ending extreme poverty, increasing shared prosperity, and promoting sustainable development. With 189 member countries and more than 120 offices worldwide, we work with public and private sector partners, investing in groundbreaking projects and using data, research, and technology to develop solutions to the most urgent global challenges. For more information, visit www.worldbank.org.
The Education Global Practice:
Education is central to achieving the World Bank Group’s twin goals. It is a reliable route out of poverty, and it drives economic growth. It is also a prime vehicle for promoting shared prosperity. The main challenge in the sector is to achieve “learning for all, learning for life”— that is, to ensure that all children and young people acquire the knowledge and skills they need for their lives and livelihoods. The WBG and the broader education development community are increasingly shifting focus to learning outcomes. Because traditional programs often fail to promote learning, the WBG’s education strategy highlights the need for a more comprehensive systems approach to education reform, investments, and service delivery. These efforts are increasingly guided by the need to invest early; invest smartly; and invest for all.
Regional context:
The Europe and Central Asia (ECA) region comprises of 30 extremely diverse clients, with a population of nearly 500 million people. The World Bank works with countries in Europe and Central Asia to eliminate poverty and promote shared prosperity, through boosting human capital, enabling markets, facilitating green transitions, and building and strengthening institutions. These medium-term objectives remain highly relevant as the World Bank supports countries in the region facing the overlapping crises of the war in Ukraine, the post COVID-19 pandemic situation, and surges in food and energy prices.
The ECA portfolio includes a strong lending pipeline as well as a large and growing portfolio of Reimbursable Advisory Services. Knowledge is critical to the Bank’s value proposition to client countries in the ECA region in both lending and advisory services. In education, recent research and policy dialogue has centered around the impact of COVID-19 on education, estimating learning losses, and providing policy advice on building resilient education systems post COVID-19.
Staff in the Education team engage with clients in in-depth technical assistance and policy discussions, design, supervise and evaluate education sector projects, and lead and participate in ASA tasks such as Education Sector Policy Studies, Public Expenditure Reviews, Impact evaluations, Country Economic Memoranda, Social Assessments, Institutional Assessments, and Regional Studies. They also lead and participate in other multisectoral lending operations, including DPLs, as well as performance-based operations. Policy dialogue is concentrated in impact evaluation, the economics of education, skills for competitiveness, education sector service delivery – including quality, relevance, efficiency, access, and financing of education. They are part of the broader HD regional team.
Duties and Accountabilities:
The selected candidate will play a key role in the RAS operations in Romania, as well as in other lending and non-lending activities with the Task Team Leader(s). The responsibilities may include:
Client Relationship
• Participate in the policy dialogue, exploring untapped areas of engagement to create complementarity with EU funded programs and respond to the Government priorities;
• Work closely with the Ministry of Education of Romania, and the Ministry of Research, Innovation, and Digitalization, as well as other Education agencies in the country on a daily basis for operational support, client engagement and CLIENT dialogue;
• Facilitate knowledge management and continuous exchange with stakeholders and relevant experts in Romania and the Bank;
• Participate in education sector-related meetings, donor coordination meetings, organized by the Bank, the Government, or international and local development partners, which require Bank representation and input;
• Draft high-quality presentations, sector briefs, and other outreach materials for different audiences, including clients, development partners and internal stakeholders;
• Collaborate with various practices and teams to provide cross-sectoral support in digital skills and learning infrastructure, and develop and implement training programs, workshops, and resources to foster interdepartmental knowledge sharing.
• Utilize advanced data analysis techniques to collect, interpret, and present insights from education indicators, assisting in data-driven decision-making and improving educational strategies, programs, and learning outcomes.
Project Management
• Provide day-to-day supervision and monitoring of RAS activities: follow-up on pending implementation issues with the counterparts, monitoring and collecting data on projects’ results indicators;
• Organize implementation activities and coordinate preparation of deliverables: set up mission agenda, participate and co-lead meetings and discussions, draft interim reports and other documents;
• Draft concept notes or grant proposals for new projects, supervision reports for ongoing projects, and completion reports for completed projects;
• Ensure RAS activities are compliant with portfolio quality requirements, manage internal approval processes, manage project budgets and monitoring and evaluation of key project deliverable;
• Coordinate with the client, including cross-cutting activities (such as gender, climate, inclusion) as well as the CMU as needed to ensure high-quality feedback;
• Facilitate the procurement and management of professional service providers (both firms and international and local consultants), including drafting TORs, managing internal procurement processes, overseeing their work, and providing mentoring if needed, and the deliverables of the assignments and payments;
• Support professional service providers in implementing project activities and reviewing the quality of deliverables;
• Identify and evaluate project risks and communicate them to the project team/leadership to address issues that arise;
• Coordinate publicity of the Project activities in collaboration with the Communications team.
Reporting:
The Extended Term Consultant (Education Analyst) will report to the Education Practice Manager for Europe and Central Asia (ECA). S/he is encouraged to work with the Program Leaders, Task Team Leaders, and the ECA education team to deliver results on the portfolio.
Selection Criteria
• Graduate Degree in Education, Economics, Public Administration, and related fields. PhD degree preferred.
• At least 2 years of work experience in operations with international and local education organizations.
• Ability to conduct research and analysis on difficult, but well-defined tasks; articulate issues and recommend solutions.
Demonstrable experience in informing education policy dialogue with the Government of Romania.
• Demonstrated ability to manage lending and non-lending activities effectively and efficiently, function within and across teams in operational and analytical work.
• Ability to function independently and in a team and handle multiple tasks, meet changing priorities, and deliver high-quality analysis and work on-time.
• Diplomatic skills, good communication and writing skills, and agility are required.
• Proactive and results-focused work style with strong problem-solving capabilities.
• Ability to work in a multicultural environment.
World Bank Group Core Competencies
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