Training Manager, Operations
Job Ref: BA/DSO/TB/3
Training Development and Implementation
Nairobi, Kenya
About Bridge International Academies
Our client is a startup revolutionizing education across Africa with a truly unique business model. The company has launched a large-scale franchise-like network of ultra low-cost for-profit private primary schools across Africa.
Their schools profitably deliver high-quality education for less than $4 per child per month, enabling local school managers to operate their school businesses profitably, while creating a highly successful business at the central level.
They have already launched the first 12 schools in our network in the slums of Nairobi with tremendous success, and plan to rapidly scale the company to serve more than 1 million families in Africa.
About this position
They have developed an extensive system and set of tools for its School Managers that allows someone the company hires from the local community to easily and successfully manage the operations of a school – they call this our “School in Box” model.
Most of the systems and tools developed are low-tech and paper-based because of the environment in which they work. The “box” starts with very comprehensive School Manager Manual and includes a detailed step-by-step, day-by-day set of processes that span across all financial, operation, instructional and human resource management issues.
Due to the standardization and systemitizing, our operational approach is most similar to that of other large scale chains of service businesses, like McDonalds.
Similar to a McDonalds, the success of the schools depends critically on the training of School Managers on how to use the tools, systems, and approaches in our “School in a Box” so that they can successfully manage a Bridge International Academy from a business perspective, as well as the training of their support team (School Operations Officers) who individually supervise in the field a group of School Managers.
We are seeking a full-time Manager/Director of Training for School Operations who will both initially lead all of these training, and very critically, be responsible for the redevelopment, enhancements, and improvements to the design of the training programs themselves. A key component of this role will be the ability for the Senior Training Specialist to design these trainings for scale.
In the coming years, Bridge International Academies will be launching hundreds of new schools each year, requiring the training of hundreds of new School Managers and dozens of School Operations Officers. Because of this scale, it’s critical that we ensure our trainings can be effective and managed to deliver training with these large numbers of trainees.
This position is about training on the business, management and operational approaches of managing schools. It is not a position about training on specific educational and pedagogical approaches to teaching. The content-specific sessions about how teaching and instruction works at our schools will come from this person working closely with our instructional team.
However, it is expected that this person will after extensive exposure to the key elements will be able to personally train School Managers on these areas, but from the perspective of how School Managers exert oversight and auditing of the instructional aspects of the school.
More specifically, the role of the Manager/Director of Training (School Operations) includes:
- Redesigning the existing training program to ensure that all School Managers can successfully implement each and every detailed Bridge International system and process, and manage a school according to Bridge International specific rules and procedures.
- Using manuals and tools from our “School in a Box”, develop all training materials needed during sessions
- Enhance and redesign training schedules
- Enhance and develop new training exercises to insure during training that candidates are successfully grasping material
- Develop evaluation tools and exams that will be used to select which candidates from training will be offered positions
- Develop Field Exercises for trainees to expose them to and evaluate them on the work that happens in the slums for marketing and recruiting new students as well as actual experience with existing schools
- Organize, manage and personally conduct training of School Managers and School Operations Officers three times each year. Trainings are approximately 6 weeks long full-time, Monday through Saturday.
- Spend time in the field with existing School Managers and Operations Officers to identify specific issues and areas that need to be enhanced or redesigned in the training to reduce issues in the field post training
- Work closely with multiple departments at the company (instruction, construction, etc) to ensure all relevant content-specific areas are covered well in trainings
- Provide detailed feedback and analysis based on training successes and failures to HR to determine how to better target School Manager candidates
- Visit schools regularly and work closely with School Operations Officers to assess additional training needs
- This is a very hands-on job, both in terms of implementing the training, but also to be sometimes out in the field (in our case, the slums of Nairobi) working with and observing School Managers 10% - 20% of the time.
About You
- You have 5-10 years experience designing and implementing complex training programs focusing on knowledge transfer and specific skill building for a particular role or job in any industry
- Rather than trainings focused on general skills or knowledge-transfer, we are looking for someone who has had to design and implement trainings for candidates for a very specific job or position.
- You have experience in designing and implementing trainings to a wide variety of people in terms of educational background, skill levels, and economic status. A real plus would be experience in delivering complex trainings to individuals with less formal education and work history.
- Experience managing large-scale multi-site simultaneous trainings is a real plus
- Experience in education is NOT a requirement.
- You have experience in identifying a person’s weaknesses and ability to figure out how to support their growth.
- You are a fantastic communicator and a team player and can strike an instant rapport with people from all different walks of life and background (the trainee school managers for Bridge live in the poor communities that we serve)
- Your inter-personal skills are extraordinary
- You have experience in managing a team of people to help implement and support a training program
- You are not afraid of getting your hands dirty
- You function well in a fast-paced informal environment where constant change is the norm and the bar for quality is set high.
- Bachelors degree
Our team has a passionate belief that basic primary education is critical to the development of every child, family, community and nation.
We believe that it is possible to address this critical need for poor families through new and innovative approaches leveraging the private sector, and that by providing low-cost but high-quality primary education, we will give millions of children the opportunity to accomplish their dreams. We are looking for someone who wants to join us in this rewarding task.
Other Requirements/Skills:
- Ability to conceptualize, design and develop content in a training-friendly way.
- Computer-friendly
- Excellent verbal and written communication skills
- Must be a team player and open to new approaches and ideas
- Strong mentoring, auditing and reporting skills
- Ability to organize, prioritize, and manage multiple tasks
If you meet the above requirements, send through your CV and application letter to info@byappointmentafrica.com.
Only short listed candidates will be contacted.
