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Ref.
2025/CFIFEEAMR/12537

Job offer type
Experts

Type of contract
Service contract

Activity sectors
Education, Higher Education and Research

Deadline date
2025/02/28 23:59

Duration of the assignment
Short term

Contract
Freelancer

Duration
TBD

Mission description

1.Main objectives of the Call for Interest

The main objective of this call for interest for education experts is to create a roster of individual experts who can support effectively the achievement of the results assigned to the Facility in term of teacher governance (teacher policy reforms, teacher management and teachers working conditions) and teacher education and professional development (pre- and in-service training, communities of practice, online learning, etc.). 

The pool of experts will enable the Facility to mobilize swiftly and efficiently, highly qualified experts to implement the country action plans (CAP) under the supervision of the Education Team of the Facility. 

The Database of Experts is the main registry for all experts who wish to offer their expertise and collaborate with the Facility from RTIA. 

By creating this database, the Facility also expects to progressively increase its reach to public institutions and build long-term partnerships

2.Type of mission description

Based on the CAP that will be agreed between the participating countries and the Facility, the national or international, public or private experts will be expected to perform a range of activities in the following areas (non-exhaustive):

  • Policy analysis and design: Offering in-depth technical expertise to shape, refine national teacher policies and implement policies to reduce teacher shortages and attrition. This includes providing guidance on structuring reforms, developing frameworks for teacher management, and advising on policy adjustments aligned with international best practices.
  • Teacher management and human resources systems: Assisting governments in developing and optimizing teacher management systems, focusing on recruitment, retention, deployment, salary, career, professional development, and performance monitoring.
  • Enhancing teacher working conditions: Evaluating existing working conditions for teachers and proposing actionable recommendations to improve their well-being and job satisfaction. This could involve addressing compensation, workload, and professional growth opportunities.
  • Capacity building and training (Pre-service and In-service teacher training): Designing and implementing comprehensive teacher training programs with certification, including pre-service and in-service training. Experts may also focus on strengthening institutional capacities for training future teachers, content development, course planning and delivery, training programme development and supporting education stakeholders.
  • Analysis and knowledge production (Communities of practice): Conducting analysis to generate insights on the effectiveness of current teacher education models. This includes producing knowledge outputs such as feasibility studies, reports, case studies, cost-benefit analysis of communities of practice, and policy briefs to inform ongoing reform efforts.
  • Monitoring and evaluation (Data to support implementation): Developing tools and mechanisms to assess the impact of educational reforms, teacher policies, and training programs. Experts will provide strategic input on how to measure outcomes and improve ongoing initiatives.
  • Digital education and teacher preparedness (Service digitalization and technology): Supporting the integration of digital tools and technologies in teacher education (information systems) and classroom practices. This includes advising on policies for teacher digital literacy, developing ICT training programs, and promoting innovative use of educational technologies to enhance teaching, learning assessments, general HR management and information systems, digitalisation of HR services, absenteeism tracking system, learning outcomes and teacher management.
  • Gender inclusivity policy, Developing and advising on gender-sensitive policies, experts will contribute insights and strategies that promote equal opportunities for teachers and ensuring inclusivity in teacher recruitment, training, and development.
  • Green skills. Advising on the design of environmental policies, tools to sensitize teachers on environmental issues and teachers’ knowledge of school resilience approach, support them in the integration of environmental challenges and solutions into teaching, among others.
  • Financial/Investment strategy for teachers' policies: Experts will support budget analysis, costing of policy options and the design of investment strategies in teacher-related policies, guiding governments and stakeholders in allocating resources for maximum impact in terms of teaching quality and educational outcomes.
  • Social Dialogue: Specific strategies to foster productive social dialogue within the education sector. This may include setting up advisory groups, regular consultative meetings with teachers’ union, and developing feedback channels that integrate teacher input into policy decisions.

3.Possible types of deliverables 

The Window 1 of Technical Assistance of the Facility is a demand-driven mechanism. As such we cannot know in advance the range of topics and deliverables that might be addressed and produced. However, in the context of the CAP (Country Action Plan) implementation, the deliverables expected from experts typically focus on actionable outputs that contribute to the goals of the project and support national education reforms. These deliverables could include (non-exhaustive):

-          Feasibility study report.

-          Analytical reports and policy design in the 4 main areas of the Facility: pedagogy, digital skills, gender, and green skills.

-          Teacher policy.

-          TES commitment on teachers and teaching.

-          Evaluation or mid-term review of a specific policy.

-          Strategies and operational plans on teacher reforms.

-          Training curricula, modules’ design and delivery.

-          Teacher Qualification Framework /teacher standards and competencies.

-          Professional development plans and support to their implementation.

-          Guidelines for Institutional Reforms (teacher training, recruitment process, or performance evaluation.).

-          Methodological support to the conception of teacher policies

-          Digital literacy programs:  curriculum guides, digital literacy resources, or ICT-focused training plans to support teachers in integrating technology into classroom practices.

-          Capitalization work and recommendations (reports, publications, workshops).

-          Any other relevant sector document

Project or context description

 

Process :

Call for interest for education experts (short-term and medium-term)

 

Project :

Regional Teachers Initiative for Africa (RTIA)

 

Donor :

European Commission (DG INTPA)

Implementation agencies :

Expertise France, Enabel and Edufi

Deadline of submission :

February 28th 2025

Published on :

January 20th 2025

Areas of intervention :

49 countries of Sub-Saharan Africa.

Reference Number :

2025-01_CFI-Expert-Generic_2501

Duration of expertises :

Up to 100 days per expert per year per country

Contacts :

Thomas POIREIR : Team Leader

thomas.poirier@rtia-facility.eu

 

Adeline FOURNIER : Deputy Team Leader

adeline.fournier@rtia-facility.eu

 

 1. Introduction

The Regional Teacher Initiative for Africa (RTIA), a programme funded by the EU/EC via the Education section (G3) of DG INTPA aims to improve learning outcomes and the socio-emotional development of children in Africa, by having a more competent, motivated, and inclusive teacher workforce in basic education. 

The concerned education subsectors are from pre-school to lower-secondary.

The RTIA will especially seek to achieve the following outcomes over the next 3 years (36 months): 

  • Improve the governance, management, attractiveness, and gender balance of the teaching profession, with a strong focus on increased digitalisation and innovation.
  • Enhance the quality, relevance and effectiveness of initial and continuous teacher professional development, notably through digital education, peer-to-peer learning approaches and regional collaboration. 

Within RTIA, the Facility will support teacher policy and improve teacher education and professional development systems by i) providing capacity building at country level through technical assistance, ii) promoting innovation and scaling of effective teaching solutions; iii) increasing the production and use of data and evidence, and iv) promoting the use of regional frameworks, evidence-based practices, and joint learning at regional level. 

The Facility from the Regional Teachers Initiative for Africa will reach the above-mentioned objectives through 3 types of instruments or “windows”: i) a window to deliver technical assistance on teacher governance and teacher education and professional development based on the demand from eligible partner countries, ii) a window on testing and scaling effective programs for teacher education and professional development in the thematic areas of digital skills, gender, green skills, and pedagogical skills, including in the context of refugees and displaced population, iii) a research window to create new evidence and support the integration of evidence in the policy making process and in the design of teacher education and professional development programs. 

In addition to these windows the Facility’s knowledge management and communication activities will further contribute to the sharing of knowledge, evidence, and best practices related to the overall Initiative outcomes. 

The Facility is funded by the European Union and co-implemented by the Partnership formed by three members state agencies: Expertise France for France, Enabel for Belgium, EDUFI for Finland. Expertise France has been designated the Coordinating Agency for this Partnership. With the Facility governance scheme serving as the Initiative's governance scheme, it is expected that the Partnership will work closely with UNESCO and AUC, in charge of the other two components of the EU Initiative. 

The duration of the action is scheduled from 01.02.2024 to 31.01.2027 (36 months) with a budget of 46.000.000 EUR.

 II. General context for establishing a database for Experts

 The Technical Assistance Window (W1) consists in the mobilisation of expertise to support Sub-Saharan African countries in the design and implementation of system reforms and policies, and capacity building around “Teacher governance” and “Teacher education and professional development.” The entire process of the Technical Assistance Window starts with a country request form (CRF) submitted by the Ministry of Education (MoE) from an eligible country. The request approval triggers the formulation of a country action plan (CAP), which is developed jointly with the education permanent experts of the Facility. In brief, a CAP is a programme of technical assistance of 200 to 400 days of expertise over a period of up to 2 years, on topics related to teacher governance and/or teacher education and professional development. The CAPs in each country are built in complementarity and synergies with other national and international programmes or mechanisms aimed at improving teacher-related issues.

In the following stages, the CAP implementation consists in executing the actions outlined in the approved CAPs. Deployment of experts will ensure the effective implementation of the CAPs.  To address the needs in technical assistance identified in the CAP of each country, the Facility will launch calls for experts on a rolling basis throughout the length of the project to mobilize the most relevant expertise. Depending on the identified needs and requests from MoEs, the Facility will select both individual (preferably from the public but also private sectors) and institutional expertise (mainly from public institutions, with a possibility to detach experts for short-term missions) from different parts of the world, especially from Europe and Africa. 

Required profile

§I. Profile of individual experts

Individual Experts (from the private or public sectors) :

-   Significant experience in teacher professional development, policy reform and management of education systems, digital education policies, monitoring and evaluation, gender policy, international aid financing quality teaching (At least 3 years of experience in at least one of its fields).

-          Proven ability to navigate in African education systems, with a thorough understanding of the cultural, socio-economic and political factors influencing educational reform in various countries.

-          Proven ability to deliver tailored, context-specific solutions that integrate teacher effectiveness, gender policy, digital education, management of education systems and professional development strategies.

-          Experience in building collaborative partnerships with local and international stakeholders.

-          Fluency in English or French or Portuguese, additional local language skills considered an asset to work in specific regions of Africa.

-          Understanding of how to align projects with donor requirements, such as the European Union Commission and other international development agencies.

-          Adherence to the Facility principles and approach and ability to represent the Facility in front of national and international counterparts.

-          Advanced degree in Education, Public Policy, Social Sciences, international cooperation, project management, applied statistics or any other related fields (master’s or Ph.D.).

 

§  Examples of profiles of interest for the Facility:

  •  Teacher governance component (non-exhaustive)
    • Education Policy specialists

o   HR specialist in the education sector

o   Education planning and budgeting specialists

o   Digital Policy specialist

o   Information system specialists

o   Social dialogue specialist

o   Economists

o   Gender / inclusive education/ EiE specialists

o   Etc....

  •       Teacher education and professional development (non-exhaustive)

 o   Pre-service teacher training specialists (curriculum design and delivery, module development, training of trainers, etc.)

o   In-service teacher training specialists

o   Specialists on teacher on-the-job inspection and support.

o   Distance learning / blended teacher training specialists.

o   Teacher assessments specialists

o   Digital skills development specialists

o   Specialist in the development of communities of practice (peer-to-peer learning)

o   Gender-responsive pedagogy specialists

o   Environmental specialists applied to the education sector

o   Etc...

 II. Selection Criteria

 

Criteria

Description

Relevant experience

A minimum of 5 years’ experience in at least one of the technical areas of intervention of the Facility: teacher policy reforms, management and governance of teacher training, monitoring and evaluation, numeric policy for education, digital education, gender policy...etc.

 

Knowledge of local context

Understanding of African education systems, governance, and cultural considerations. Prior experience working in the continent with national stakeholders is an advantage.

 

Language proficiency

 

Proficiency either in English or French is essential.

Proficiency in Portuguese is also looked for to engage with lusophone countries

Any additional regional/ local languages to work in specific settings is a plus.

 

Educational background

 

Advanced degree (Master’s/PhD) in education, public policy, project management, applied statistics, social sciences, international cooperation or related fields.

 

 

Additional information

Experts interested in joining the pool of Experts of the Facility should submit their CVs in EUROPASS format (max 3 pages). Make sure to highlight your training skills and experiences relevant to the types of mission, fields of expertise and geographical areas covered by this call for interest. Please also indicate at least three references (who will not be contacted until you are selected for a specific consultancy).

Applications must be submitted before March, 1st 2025.

Candidates shortlisted under this call for interest will be contacted at a later stage to provide additional information (contacts, registration number, significant experience by type of assignment, working languages, daily fees, etc.).

Selection criteria for applications

The selection process for candidates will be based on the following criteria :

  • Candidate’s training/diplomas related to the expert assignment
  • Candidate’s skills linked with the expert mission
  • Candidate’s experiences linked with the expert mission
  • Candidate’s expected linguistic understanding

Deadline for application : 2025/02/28 23:59

File(s) attached : 2. RTIA_W1_FAQ_EN-0125.pdf - 2. RTIA_W1_FAQ_FR-0125.pdf - call-for-experts-eng-published1.2.docx - call-for-experts-fr-publie1.2.docx

Expertise France is the public agency for designing and implementing international technical cooperation projects. The agency operates around four key priorities :

  • democratic, economic, and financial governance ;
  • peace, stability, and security ;
  • climate, agriculture, and sustainable development ;
  • health and human development ;

In these areas, Expertise France conducts capacity-building initiatives and manages project implementation, leveraging technical expertise and acting as a project coordinator. This involves combining public sector expertise with private sector skills to drive impactful results. 

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