Senior Policy Manager (What Works Hub for Global Education)

About the Blavatnik School of Government

Our vision is of a world better led, a world better served and a world better governed. We are a global school committed to improving the quality of government and public policymaking worldwide, through three routes: teaching current and future leaders; generating research with impact; and engaging with governments and practitioners.

What we offer

The School is a collaborative, friendly, and dynamic department based in an award-winning building in Oxford. We host regular events and talks with well-known guest speakers – all of which are open to staff. On the social side, we have regular coffee/cake mornings for staff, a family-friendly Halloween event, and Christmas and summer parties.

As an employer, we genuinely care about our employees’ wellbeing and this is reflected in the range of benefits that we offer including:

• An excellent contributory pension scheme
• 38 days’ annual leave
• Family leave schemes and a comprehensive range of childcare services
• Cycle loan scheme and discounted bus travel and Season Ticket travel loans
• Membership to a variety of social and sports clubs
• Opportunities for remote working.

More information about working at the School can be found on our jobs page.

About the Role

The Blavatnik School of Government is looking for a strategic, collaborative and implementation-focused Senior Policy Manager to support, facilitate, and drive delivery as part of the Senior Leadership Team of the What Works Hub for Global Education (WWHGE) – a new £30m, six-year global research project and policy initiative.

The What Works Hub on Global Education (WWHGE) aims to dramatically increase learning outcomes for children in developing countries by generating new evidence, and working with policymakers and NGOs to deliver the best teaching at scale. It is a collaboration of excellent and highly committed academics working on education-related research; developing country governments who are keen to champion improvements domestically; grassroots organisations who both deliver education and advocate for change; and the international education community, from UN agencies to the Gates Foundation. The Hub will work closely with education and finance ministries around the world, as well as the main funder, the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office. The Hub has three main pillars:

1. Evidence Synthesis. Making available to governments the best existing evidence on what works on education (pillar1)
2. Evidence Ecosystems. Supporting governments to generate and use evidence for bold, large-scale reform (pillar 2)
3. Implementation Science. Catalyse a new focus on implementation science within education research, taking existing evidence on what policies work and trying to understand how governments can implement those policies at the scale necessary for transformative outcomes (pillar 3)

We are now looking for a highly experienced Senior Policy Manager to build out our policy engagement and government support function. Working closely with the WWHGE Senior Leadership Team, the postholder will take overall responsibility for managing the implementation of the development of evidence ecosystems and engagement work for and in the 11 countries, the global education community, and/or on policy areas.

This will include working across all the ways we envisage supporting Low- and Middle-Income country policy makers: education labs (EdLabs); executive programmes; case studies; fellows programmes; bespoke policy briefings’ the creation of policy products, and others.

About You

You will have demonstrable experience of working at a senior level in the public policy, international development or not-for-profit sectors in an institution with global reach and of leading successful policy-practice engagement strategies for new projects.

You will possess first-class stakeholder management skills (working at senior and mid-range levels) in a global context and be skilled at converting conceptual discussions into project activities and results. As an adaptable, team focused project manager, you will be capable of delivering exceptional results on time and in budget.

Motivated by the mission of the WWHGE and the School, you will use your exceptional communication skills to oversee the communication unit and delivery of the comms strategy. You will be comfortable synthesising complex issues for a non-expert audience in a compelling way.

Acting as an ambassador for the WWHGE’s work you will be confident about using the highest-quality evidence to inform and shape policy products, co-leading policy engagement with numerous stakeholders and representing the WWHGE at high-level evidence to policy events, such as the BE2 gatherings, FCDO and donor flagship events, Education World Forum.

Application Process

You will be required to upload a supporting statement, your CV and the details of two referees as part of your online application.

The closing date for applications is 12:00 noon (UK time) on Monday 25 March 2024.

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