Academy Manager

Description

Bridge Kenya

Bridge Kenya is a community school programme that partners with parents, communities and teachers to provide a life changing education and gateway to success.

Bridge Kenya transforms lives and opens the door to a successful future for its pupils. Together with its teachers, school leaders, families and communities, it creates schools that deliver academic excellence, build the essential skills for success, and provide a caring, nurturing community that supports growth.

In 2009, Bridge Kenya opened its first school in Nairobi’s Mukuru Kwa Njenga. Since then we have iterated and innovated, building a transformative community school programme that is data-driven and evidence-based and accountable to families. We have re-engineered every part of the education system, from teacher training and support, to lesson delivery and design, construction, and administration; making community schools as effective and transparent as possible. Our success in Kenya has enabled us to create other community school programmes in Africa and beyond.

Since 2015, Bridge Kenya’s national (KCPE) exam results have continued to prove academic excellence, significantly outperforming national averages. Every year, tens of pupils from some of the most underserved communities in the country score 400+ in their KCPE with 1000s’ more scoring over 300 marks. Our Community school graduates have gone to top secondary schools and universities; both within Kenya and the US. These graduates continue to excel in various top national secondary schools in Kenya including Maranda High, Starehe Boys, Alliance Girls, Pangani Girls and MPESA Foundation. In addition, some of our first cohort of pupils are now in top universities including Nairobi University, Kenya and Amherst College in the US.

Outside of the classroom, our pupils participate in extracurricular activities such as debates and sports to help them build confidence, teamwork skills and independence. They continue to prove their co-curricular prowess – with schools competing at the national level co-curricular competitions every year and participating in East Africa regional competitions.

We are not just a community school programme, every day we work to transform lives. We are nurturing children holistically, by empowering teachers and teaching pupils to be disciplined and confident using positive behavioural techniques and approaches. These traits empower pupils to lead and a successful future long after they graduate.

Our community school programme has a long legacy of success and has opened the door to opportunities that many of our pupils and their families could never have imagined.

A quality education has the power to transform the opportunities for Kenya’s children. In joining us, you will join a group of dynamic and passionate Kenyan’s taking concrete action to help ensure a better future for the children of Kenya.

Schools

Schools is the heart of our work. The team is mandated to inspire teachers to teach with passion, pupils to learn with purpose, parents to believe in a better future for their children, and communities to become the change they want to see in the world.

To achieve this vision, the team ensures schools are smoothly run – the school team is motivated and inspired, delivering life changing lessons, creating an experience that makes parents stay with us, and also cultivating interest and excitement in our work in communities where we serve.

Schools is responsible for ensuring all of the work created by our expert teams, including Instructional Design, Leadership & Development, Technology, Communications, Creative and Insight, are used in each school, and each school is managed to achieve its goal of ensuring every child enjoys a learning environment that develops her core skills, knowledge and confidence.

The performance of the entire organization is led by the Schools Group, which is responsible for day-to-day management of each school. Schools works to strengthen school enrollment and student retention, ensuring every school is regarded as the strongest school in its neighborhood and delivers on improved learning outcomes for children and earns the trust of the parents.

We engage with school leaders and teachers every day, ensuring ongoing professional development, performance management, and intensive coaching. We are always seeking effective ways of ensuring every school is supported with data-driven practices.

We measure our success through both the financial sustainability of the school and the learning outcomes of the children in the classroom. We are performance driven.

About the Role

The Academy Manager is responsible for managing and overseeing the operations of the Bridge Academy in all respects. The role holder is ultimately responsible for the smooth running of the Bridge school, the academic achievement of its pupils and the management of its staff. This job requires a strong presence around the academy and the local community.

What You Will Do

• Academy management – ensure that the academy’s financial, operational, and instructional goals are met leveraging smartphone and computer tablet technologies to manage operations and track oversight; escalate any problems immediately.
• Implement and enforce approved education and administrative policies as directed.
• Community relations – develop and maintain strong relationships with local leaders and organisations to advocate for higher-quality education and promote Bridge.
• Parent outreach – conduct various forms of customer outreach ranging from door-to-door canvassing to academy-hosted events in order to attract new pupils to Bridge.
• Customer relations – maintain positive relationships with existing families to ensure their loyalty, timely fees payments, and word-of-mouth recommendations; be accountable and ensure all parent queries are responded to in a timely manner.
• Academic oversight – Supervise and mentor teachers to ensure pupils are receiving a world class education; recruit new teachers as needed.
• Supplies and facility maintenance – ensure the academy has all of the resources needed to teach pupils, and that its environment is clean, safe, and conducive for learning; manage academy cook and person responsible for keeping academy clean.
• Financial sustainability – ensure the academy is able to grow and pay all staff salaries and vendors on time by ensuring all pupils’ fees are paid on time and academy spending is on budget.
• And any other related duties that are in line with your training and competencies.

What You Should Have

1. A KCSE mean grade of C plain and above for P1 trained teachers and D+ and above for ECD trained teachers.
2. Bachelor of Education as an added advantage.
3. A well liked teacher (or youth leader) with at least 2 years of teaching experience.
4. At least 2 years of experience in managing a team of 5 to 10 people as an added advantage.
5. Experience in fee management and enrolment and oversight of other teachers as an added advantage.
6. Motivated in doing something for the development of the community.
7. Ability to address the parents with utmost respect and solve the problems with right solutions.
8. Ability to handle a team and face challenges on day to day operations.
9. Ability to assess a team of teachers in respect to their deliverables.
10. Innovative with an appetite for trying out new things.
11. Should not be too comfortable in delegating and therefore comes with expectations of support staff.
12. Respected in the community with a strong connection with the community.
13. Should not have a criminal history.
14. Should be from the dominant cultural group of the community.
15. Positive and never-say-die attitude, extroverted and sunny.

You’re also

A detailed doer – You have a track record of getting things done. You’re organized and responsive. You take ownership of every idea you touch and execute it to a fine level of detail, setting targets, engaging others, and doing whatever it takes to get the job done. You can multi-task dozens of such projects at once and never lose sight of the details. Likely, you have some experience in a start-up or other rapid-growth company.

A networking mastermind – You excel at meeting new people and turning them into advocates. You communicate in a clear, conscientious, and effective way in both written and oral speech. You can influence strangers in the course of a single conversation. Allies and colleagues will go to bat for your ideas. You have an existing network from prior experience in the country, preferably in the regulatory, education, or business sectors.

A creative problem-solver – Growing any business from scratch comes with massive and constant challenges. On top of that, Bridge works in often fragile, sometimes volatile low-resource communities and with complex government systems. You need to be flexible and ready to get everything done effectively, quickly, and affordably with the materials at hand.

A relentless advocate – The children we serve and teachers we empower never leave your mind. You know them, get them, have shared a meal with them (or would be happy to in the future). You would never shrink back from shaking a parent’s hand or picking up a crying child, no matter what the person was wearing or looked like. Every decision you make considers their benefit, experience, and value.

A malleable learner – You believe you can always do better. You welcome constructive criticism and provide it freely to others. You know you only get better tomorrow when others point out where you’ve missed things or failed today.

A data-driven decision-maker – When making decisions, you don’t rely on your intuition alone. You collect data, you analyze it and make decisions with clear justifications.

A curious investigator – You ask why a lot. You don’t just take what you see and accept it. You wonder why it is that way, and are aware that the world we see is created by human choices and actions – and it could be different. You wonder, and see the world as wonderful even when you want to change a part of it that is unjust.