Who We Are
Bridge International Academies is the world’s largest and fastest-growing chain of primary and pre-primary schools with more than 400 academies and 100,000 pupils in Kenya, Uganda, and Nigeria. We democratize the right to succeed by giving families living in poverty access to the high-quality education that will allow their children to live a very different life. We leverage experts, data, and technology in order to standardize and scale every aspect of quality education delivery, from how and where academies are built to how teachers are selected and trained, and how lessons are delivered and monitored for improvement. We are vertically integrated, tech-enabled, and on our way to profitability. Bridge expects to continue rapid expansion in East Africa, and has just launched operations in Nigeria in September 2015, with India to follow in 2016.
The Bridge Offer
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 to deliver for these families. The quality offered results in the average pupil from our communities in East Africa failing to reach proficiency in primary school and on average fail the primary exit exams that are critical to their development. Teachers are unresponsive and occasionally abusive, and fees are often unaffordable. Even government schools can cost families a significant amount of money after all the additional fees are added up. 47% of classroom teaching time can be lost due to teacher absenteeism or neglect. 55% of families in our communities 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 scope and sequences, instructional materials, 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 2015, Bridge operates more than 400 academies, serving roughly 100,000 pupils in Kenya and Uganda.
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.
About the Role
Bridge has intense 15-day initial trainings for teachers. In Kenya, for example, this trainings have 300 to 900 trainees. Each country has a local Training Manager, who in turn manages several full-time trainers -- who run the sessions. (Occasionally there are also 're-trainings' -- 2 to 3 day centralized gatherings that we've used to good purpose, when we make big changes to curriculum). We might estimate that each of our four countries has 5 to 9 trainings next year. So roughly 25 different fifteen day trainings! The job of the director is to maximize the readiness of teachers for their first months on the job -- by doing a great job of managing and improving each country's Training Manager; using data and judgment to understand what's working and what's not; and inventing systems to improve every aspect of this 15-day experience. The Director also manages an Assistant Director who creates the training curriculum -- the mix of sessions, of readings, and videos. This job has a ton of travel. We can be flexible on the 'home base' -- Nairobi, Lagos, Boston, London -- but the right director should love to actually be present at trainings, personally modeling excellence for the Training Managers and the Trainers as well.
What you will do
Manage the Associate Director of Teacher Training who develops the teacher training content.
Manage the Training Directors in each country, who manage the trainers and assistant trainers who execute the training program in each country.
Ensure the training program and selection activities are executed as designed by the Associate Director of Teacher Training and the Associate Director of Teacher Evaluation, Recruitment and Selection.
Collaborate with HR, IT, Administration and other teams to ensure the entire 3-week residential training runs smoothly and that the trainers and have the support they need to do their jobs well.
Work with the country directors, academic directors, innovation team, curriculum team and training managers to determine the extent to which the current training program is effectively preparing our teachers to be successful; consistently driving improvement.
Required Skills & Experience
The Director must be a data-driven individual with experience developing and managing cultures of high performance and high expectations. You must be a great academic leader who understands the difference between typical 'blah' teacher training and excellent training (that ultimately makes a difference for the young students).
Be a self-starter and problem-solver, who thinks three and four steps ahead. Be hard working and collaborative, with the tenacity to plow through challenges. Be both detailed and results-oriented, driven by the data that will allow us to know what is working and what isn’t working for kids. Be humble, seeking out feedback, internalizing it, and using it to get better.
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