LONG TERM NATIONAL INDIVIDUAL CONSULTANCY on Partnership with Ankara Metropolitan Municipality on Early Childhood Education, Ankara, Turkiye

UNICEF works in some of the world’s toughest places, to reach the world’s most disadvantaged children. To save their lives. To defend their rights. To help them fulfill their potential. 

Across 190 countries and territories, we work for every child, everywhere, every day, to build a better world for everyone. 

And we never give up. 

You can watch our video to learn more about UNICEF Turkiye Country Office and a glance of our worklife.

Visit our website to learn more about what we do at UNICEF.

For every child, inclusivity

From 0 to 8 years of age is the fastest period of a child’s linguistic, social-emotional, and physical development. Research shows that during this period, characterized as the early childhood years, most brain and language development is completed.This critical early period is when children start developing thinking, learning, speaking, questioning, self-regulating and social interaction skills. During these critical years of early growth and development, the connections in the brain are intensively established. Accordingly, the aim of early childhood education is to prepare children for social and school life by supporting basic development areas like mental, socio-emotional, language, motor skills and self-care. Research shows that education received during these years increases the development potential of children and has a positive influence on their preparedness for primary school and on their success level in school during formal education in the short and medium term. In the long term, early learning plays an operative role in the development of skills that determine sustainable outcomes in life. This influence, in turn, points to the strength of early childhood education in building human capital by investing in the individual starting during the first years of life.

 

How can you make a difference? 

Ankara Metropolitan Municipality (AMM) and UNICEF started collaborating under a Rolling Work Plan covering 2022-2023. This collaboration includes supporting 20 playrooms of the municipality to provide quality ECE services to children, supporting teachers’ professional development through teacher trainings, supporting parents/caregivers with informative interactive sessions on child development and healthy eating habits, supporting more than 600 children with healthy snacks, preparation of a healthy diet list, supporting toy libraries of the municipality technically and financially, and supporting the organization of neighbourhood-level ECE activities.

The individual consultant/expert is expected to support UNICEF and AMM in the operationalisation and functioning of playrooms, so that they are able to provide structured education support to children. This support includes helping teachers in the preparation of daily and monthly education plans, on-site supervision and providing constructive feedback in class, replying to teachers’ questions both remotely and face to face. Moreover, the consultant is expected to deliver face to face teacher training.

 

Deliverables and Tasks:

Tasks	Deliverable	Required Days	Timeline
Task 1 Supporting teachers’ professional development with teacher trainings and regular supervision.	10 teacher trainings are conducted. Preparation of needs assessment survey on capacity building needs of teachers. İdentifying training topics and delivering trainings. Preparation of 1-pager training report to assess the effectiveness of the trainings. * Once every three-months, quarterly trainings will be conducted. AMM and UNICEF will decide the dates.	20 days	September 2024 -November 2026
Task 2 Providing on-site supervision support to teachers in playrooms	Development of quarterly monitoring reports – Report 1	20 days	September 2024 – January 2025
Task 3 Providing on-site supervision support to teachers in playrooms	Development of quarterly monitoring reports – Report 2	20 days	February 2025-July 2025
Task 4 Providing on-site supervision support to teachers in playrooms	Development of quarterly monitoring reports – Report 3	20 days	August 2025-December 2025
Task 5 Providing on-site supervision support to teachers in playrooms	Development of quarterly monitoring reports – Report 4	20 days	January 2026-May 2026
Total Workload			100 working days

*All deliverables as per the scope of work must be satisfactorily completed and accepted by UNICEF TCO to facilitate the payment. Delivery estimated working days are tentative.

The deliverables will be in Turkish. The consultant will be responsible for meeting the set deadlines as described above and produce high quality deliverables. UNICEF will measure the consultant’s performance and quality of deliverables in accordance with UNICEF’s regulations. Additionally, the consultant will participate in regular weekly meetings with UNICEF and Ankara Municipality representatives when required.

 

Duty Station: The consultant is required to be based in Ankara for the duration of the consultancy, which is approximately 100 days.

Supervisor: The consultant will work under the overall supervision of the UNICEF Early Childhood Education Officer. Day-to-day supervision and guidance will be provided by UNICEF.

Estimated Cost of Consultancy: Applications shall include a detailed financial proposal that elaborates on daily costs based on the completion of above-mentioned deliverables, including a total sum demanded. All costs shall be covered by the contractor and should be included in the financial proposal. The candidate is required to specify their daily rates and the total amount as per the number of anticipated working days for each deliverable in the financial proposal and provide the breakdown of the lump sum amount as well as incidentals of each deliverable in TRY. 

Payment: UNICEF will issue a contract in TRY. The payment will be done in instalments upon submission of the deliverables as per the above list and will be executed in TRY.

Payment Schedule: The payments will be made upon the delivery of outputs. In case of any unexpected delay(s) in the estimated time frame (approval process, force majeure, etc.), the duration of the assignment might be extended subject to the same conditions and mutual will of the parties.

Travel Requirement: There is no travel required for this consultancy. Consultant is responsible for the travels within the duty station, Ankara.

Reservations: UNICEF reserves the right to terminate the contract without a prior notice and/or withhold all or a portion of payment if performance is unsatisfactory, if the rules and the regulations regarding confidentiality, ethics and procedures of UNICEF and the project partners are not followed, if work/outputs are incomplete, not delivered or for failure to meet deadlines.

 

To qualify as an advocate for every child you will have… 

• A PhD degree or equivalent experience in early childhood education is required.
• At least 5 years of academic work in a higher education institution in the field of ECE.
• At least five years of experience in delivering teacher training.
• At least five years of experience in providing on-site supervision to teachers in playrooms and proving this with sample work.
• At least five years of research experience (qualitative and quantitative) and publications in the field of ECE.
• At least five years of experience in working with national/international organizations in the field of ECE.
• Developing country work experience and/or familiarity with emergency is considered an asset.
• Fluency in English is required. Knowledge of another official UN language (Arabic, Chinese, French, Russian or Spanish) or a local language is an asset.

Application and Selection Process

Terms of Reference for this consultancy can be accessed through here  ToR- ECE Expert for Ankara Municipality.docx.

To apply for this consultancy, the following documents should be submitted in English.

• Financial Proposal Template_ECE Expert.docx
• P11 Form or most recent CV along with sample works in mentoring teachers in the classroom.

Financial proposals should be submitted in separate folders from the remaining documentation. After the technical evaluation, the financial proposals of qualified candidates will be evaluated. The technical evaluation will be completed based on the below technical evaluation criteria.

Kindly submit your applications to Ms. Kumru Ozberk (kozberk@unicef.org) as well. 

The applications will be evaluated from the technical and financial point of view. Technical aspects will be evaluated using the criteria outlined in the below matrix:

Criteria for technical evaluation	Max Points
PhD degree in early childhood education or 10 years of commensurate work experience in ECE	10
At least 5 years of academic work in a higher education institution in the field of ECE.	10
At least 5 years of experience in delivering teacher trainings.	15
At least 5 years of experience in providing mentoring support to teachers in the playrooms and proving this with sample work.	20
At least 5 years of research experience (qualitative and quantitative) and publications in the field of ECE.	5
At least 5 years of experience in working with national/international organizations in the field of ECE.	10
TOTAL	70

 

The financial proposals will be opened only for the candidates that reach or exceed forty-nine (49) points out of a maximum seventy (70) points. Thirty (30) points will be awarded to the candidate that presented the lowest fee for the services requested. The remaining financial offers will receive proportional points ([lowest bid/bid] x 30 points).

For every Child, you demonstrate… 

UNICEF’s values of Care, Respect, Integrity, Trust, Accountability, and Sustainability (CRITAS). 

  

To view our competency framework, please visit  here. 

  

UNICEF is here to serve the world’s most disadvantaged children and our global workforce must reflect the diversity of those children. The UNICEF family is committed to include everyone, irrespective of their race/ethnicity, age, disability, gender identity, sexual orientation, religion, nationality, socio-economic background, or any other personal characteristic.

UNICEF offers reasonable accommodation for consultants/individual contractors with disabilities. This may include, for example, accessible software, travel assistance for missions or personal attendants. We encourage you to disclose your disability during your application in case you need reasonable accommodation during the selection process and afterwards in your assignment. 

UNICEF has a zero-tolerance policy on conduct that is incompatible with the aims and objectives of the United Nations and UNICEF, including sexual exploitation and abuse, sexual harassment, abuse of authority and discrimination. UNICEF also adheres to strict child safeguarding principles. All selected candidates will be expected to adhere to these standards and principles and will therefore undergo rigorous reference and background checks. Background checks will include the verification of academic credential(s) and employment history. Selected candidates may be required to provide additional information to conduct a background check. 

 

Remarks:  

Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted and advance to the next stage of the selection process. 

Individuals engaged under a consultancy or individual contract will not be considered “staff members” under the Staff Regulations and Rules of the United Nations and UNICEF’s policies and procedures, and will not be entitled to benefits provided therein (such as leave entitlements and medical insurance coverage). Their conditions of service will be governed by their contract and the General Conditions of Contracts for the Services of Consultants and Individual Contractors. Consultants and individual contractors are responsible for determining their tax liabilities and for the payment of any taxes and/or duties, in accordance with local or other applicable laws. 

The selected candidate is solely responsible to ensure that the visa (applicable) and health insurance required to perform the duties of the contract are valid for the entire period of the contract. Selected candidates are subject to confirmation of fully-vaccinated status against SARS-CoV-2 (Covid-19) with a World Health Organization (WHO)-endorsed vaccine, which must be met prior to taking up the assignment. It does not apply to consultants who will work remotely and are not expected to work on or visit UNICEF premises, programme delivery locations or directly interact with communities UNICEF works with, nor to travel to perform functions for UNICEF for the duration of their consultancy contracts.