The Citizens Foundation
Mission/History:
Pakistan is the sixth most populated country in the world with 180 million people, and the second
highest out of school population in the world; the UN estimates that there are 20 million out-of-school
children today, 7 million at the primary level, making Pakistan unlikely to achieve the 2015 Millennium
Development Goals of universal primary education. For many of those children who do manage to
attend public or low-cost private schools, quality of education is poor and school dropout rates are high.
Girls especially have trouble accessing schools – not just physically (enrollment drops by 20% for every
500 meters that a girl has to travel to school) but also culturally and financially.
The Citizens Foundation (TCF) was set up in 1996 by a group of concerned citizens with a vision to
remove barriers of class and privilege through provision of quality education to the poorest children of
Pakistan, especially girls.
TCF started in 1996 with 5 schools in the slum areas of Karachi, and has now evolved into one of the
largest network of privately owned formal low cost schools for underprivileged communities in the
world. TCF currently operates 1,000 purpose built school units with 145,000 students in slums and
villages across 100 towns and cities of Pakistan. More than 10,000 people are provided employment
across Pakistan, with 7,700 female teachers earning livelihoods from TCF schools. The non-profit is
operated on the highest standards of professional excellence, registered in Pakistan as a Company
Limited by guarantee under section 42 of the Companies Ordinance, 1984. A leading firm KPMG Taseer
Hadi & Co audits its accounts.
TCF has been recognized regionally and internationally for the high caliber of work. It is the 2013 winner
of the Skoll Foundation Award for Social Entrepreneurs, and the SAFA award for best presented
accounts, the 2010 winner of the Annual World Innovation Summit for Education (WISE) Awards by
Qatar Foundation. In 2011, TCF was invited to become a member of the Clinton Global Initiative. TCF
has also been commended for its efforts by Congressman Mike Honda and Former Congressman, Lee
Hamilton, as well as many others.
Notable Outcomes:
The TCF model has proven effective in achieving results by surpassing national averages in several
parameters. Over 45% of the TCF student body comprises of girls – as against 39% of national girls
primary enrollment. Over 90% of TCF students successfully pass the Matriculation exam (Class 10),
versus the national average of 70%. Over 70% of TCF students continue on to study in Class 11 & 12
versus the national average of 40%, while 16% of TCF students study beyond Class 12, versus a national
average estimated to be 5%. TCF infrastructure on the ground is also leveraged through strategic
partners in key priority areas like adult literacy and clean drinking water.
Opportunity/Challenge to address:
Given the TCF model’s proven success across Pakistan, the organization now plans to strategically
leverage the strengths of the TCF model to maximize impact to a greater proportion of the 20 million
out-of-school children (7 million at the primary level) and help achieve connections to the “last mile” of
hard to reach out-of-school children. TCF is in a unique position to best deliver this compared to other
education providers because of two factors:
(1)
The TCF scale - TCF is operating its schooling model across the nation with coverage in rural and
urban areas in all provinces of Pakistan. This successful operation across vast ranges of terrain – from
highly volatile slums and hard to access rural villages – makes TCF very unique compared to the
environment regular school providers operate in. This scale has been achieved by TCF’s apolitical and
secular stance, TCF’s robust and transparent first come first served admissions process, and a very
strong regional presence to ensure smooth operations. In addition to this, TCF’s innovative model of
locating schools within walking distance of students, and having a wholly female faculty has also enabled
a notable female student ratio of nearly 50% - at odds with the national average of 43% of women in
school .
(2)
The TCF quality – TCF ensures standardized delivery of quality education through an augmented
curriculum, fully trained teachers, and robust monitoring and evaluation mechanisms. TCF has achieved
results surpassing national averages in several parameters such as a 95% pass rate at Matriculation Level
vs. the national average of 60%; 72% post matric continuation in education vs. the national average of
40%.
Point of Contact for purposes of this position: (Name & Job Title): Amna Khalid, Executive Advisor
Telephone Number: +92 300 8268230
Website: www.tcf.org.pk
E-mail Address: [email protected]
THE POSITION
Title: Strategic Development Associate
The associate will be placed with the Education Department at TCF.
Key responsibilities:
The role of the associate will be to develop a detailed case of the Education Department, its operations
and future strategy. Specifically, the case will involve: mapping existing operations and organizational
structure of the Education Department; mapping its position and objectives within TCF’s larger
organization structure; developing a strategy of operations for the next 3 years based on the
department’s and TCF’s mission.
TCF has a 1000 school footprint in Paksitan’s most vulnerable and marginalized neighborhoods. TCFs
Education Department is responsible to ensure that TCF schooling truly brings about social change at the
grassroot level – imparting education beyond literacy and creating agents of positive social change.
The TCF Education Department is responsible for ensuring “good quality” of education at TCF schools,
measured by student learning outcomes. The education program is based on a rigorous schedule for a)
Academic development of curriculum, exams, teacher training modules and hiring of teachers, b) a
strong Training Program for improvement of teaching practices through regular training for new and old
teachers and a c) Quality Assurance Department for central examination systems. The objective is to
ensure that student outputs match the quality standards set by Academics, and disseminated by
Training.
a)
Academic Program: The TCF curriculum blends concepts identified in international as well as
national curricula, and includes activities for child personal development (e.g. painting, speeches and
debates, tableau, games). The Academics Team has established realistic yet challenging benchmarks for
all classes, which determines the course of learning for children. TCF uses a mix of textbooks to achieve
these Class level benchmarks; using learning materials by leading publishers in addition to books
prescribed by the provincial boards of education. TCF has also collaborated with education specialists to
develop student handbooks and detailed teacher guides. The development of such manuals has enabled
standardization of quality across subjects and provinces each of which has a different board of
education.
b)
Training Program: Teachers are generally hired from within the school neighbourhood. TCF then
extensively trains these new teachers. Training modules are developed through both needs analysis and
educational research.
Four types of training modules are conducted:
1.
Pre Service Training (PRESET): 12-days training for all newly hired TCF faculty members to
introduce the TCF education model before teachers are placed at schools.
2.
In Service Training (INSET): 7,700+ teachers and 500+ trainers nationwide participated in this
Program in 2014 regardless of their academic or teaching qualifications or experience.
3.
Staff Development Days (SDD): The SDD is a 2-day needs based training held monthly in which
the school faculty discusses its teaching concerns.
4.
Educational Leadership & Management Training of School Heads (ELMTSH): This is hosted
annually for 6 days, focusing on capacity building for School Heads: leadership, team building,
communication skills, and motivation. TCF School Heads are the fundamental link in the entire process
of teaching and learning as they interpret, understand, and inculcate the vision of TCF and its values in
the schools.
c)
Quality Assurance process: TCF sets learning outcome targets for each subject, customized to
the local needs and past performance of the school. Principals and teachers are then trained and
coached to be able to meet the learning outcomes. Assessments are consolidated twice a year in
December and in March and shared with parents through a parent – teacher meeting. In line with child
centered learning using Bloom’s taxonomy, TCF has a remarks-based assessment system for Early
Childhood Education [ECE] level in pre-primary classes of KG, 1 and 2.
The TCF Education department is responsible for understanding the national curriculum objectives and
ensuring that all schools have books assigned that meet the yearly learning objectives. For this in-house
development of curriculum as well as identificuation of quality books by puslishers in the country is
done. The department is also responsible for special projects such as developing social studies learning
materials to ensure a secular and apolitical textbooks in the local language that would promote critical
thinking skills, and is currently working on developing math learning materials, and in leveraging
technology to deliver online training modules, keeping extremely challenging environments without
electricity and internet access in most of the locations. Additionally, training of teachers on pedagogical
skills as well as course content is done to ensure a robust and knowledgable workforce that can enhance
the learning outcomes of the child.
The role of the research associate will be to develop a strategy for operations and expansion of the TCF
Education Department by identifying key areas to focus in the Academics and Training functions in the
next 3 years.
Key responsibilities would include:
TCF role would entail working within the Education Department’s operations and with TCF schools (see
above).
i)
ii)
iii)
iv)
Mapping areas of operations
Profiling communities and households TCF schools serve
Developing an understanding of the challenges faced by TCF (or the Ed department) as a
not-for profit organization working to ensure continued access to quality education in lowincome communities.
Suggestions for key strategic initiatives that can be undertaken in a three year time horizon
to help TCF (or Ed Department) achieve its goals of providing quality education to low
income communities. These initiatives could be identified from global best practices.
v)
Identfying key areas in education for TCF to explore and creating a development strategy to
implement programs either inhouse or in alliance with partners
a)
Defining parameters for ‘quality education’ for TCF as an institution and corresponding
benchmarking indicators to define this quality. TCF operates a 1000 schools all over the country and in
order to ensure standardization of quality education, its definition and benchmarks become imperative.
For TCF, is quality an emphasis on analytics or is it the provision of basic infrastructure like availability of
a boundary wall, a clean washroom etc. or both?
b)
Defining key parameters for an ideal “TCF student” at the end of the schooling period. What
personality traits are existing and what should be the ideal measure to reach?
c)
Suggestions for key strategic initiatives to be undertaken in the three-year time horizon;
timelines and resource requirements to be enunciated. These initiatives must be proposed with where
TCF needs to go in its ‘quality of education’ definition.
d)
Identifying key areas in education for TCF to explore and creating a development strategy to
implement programs either in-house or in alliance with partners
Potential mechanisms to achieve the strategy document:
The associate will be expected to employ a number of methods when putting the case together,
including documentary analysis of existing TCF documents, interviews with key informants within the
organization,
school
visits
etc.
The associate will be expected to spend time at the headquarters with the Education department team,
and visit schools and communities.
1)
Shadowing the Training and Academics team for a year in order to understand better working
mechanism at TCF (this would involve significant school visits all over the country).
2)
Select comparable education NGOs worldwide (scope, size, ideology) to understand how the
Education teams work. Conduct necessary literature review followed by establishing contacts with
identified institutions.
3)
Suggest way forward for the education team with specific strategic initiatives to be undertaken
and providing corresponding budgetary requirements/ timeframes and resource reinforcements.
Strategy could also recommend changes in the organogram
Essential qualifications: MSc Education / Development Policy / Business Administration
Desirable qualifications (non-essential but an asset for this position): PHD in Education
Work Site Location: TCF head office, in Karachi, Pakistan
Annual salary: USD 500 / month
Visa requirements: Visa and work permit required
Possibilities for extension of one year opportunity: Yes
Anything more you would like to share: In a developing country where public systems have broken
methods of delivery, TCF is a unique organization showcasing how the civil society can step up
and fill the gap and serve as a working model for the public sector to adopt. The next 5 years,
and the research done by the associate, will be definitive in shaping TCFs role in the low cost
education sector of Pakistan, and perhaps the world.