Programme Director (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: teachingcurrent and future leaders; generatingresearch with impact; and engagingwith 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

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About the Role

The Blavatnik School of Government is looking for a strategic, collaborative and implementation-focused Programme Director 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:

Evidence Synthesis. Making available to governments the best existing evidence on what works on education (pillar1)

Evidence Ecosystems. Supporting governments to generate and use evidence for bold, large-scale reform (pillar 2)

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)

As a lynchpin role within the hub and a member of the Senior Leadership Team with responsibility for programme management, the Programme Director will draw together our 3 pillars into an integrated strategic delivery plan to achieve our mission.

Leading the Programme Management team of eight staff and multiple consultants, this role will have direct line management responsibility for four to five staff members.  Sharing responsibility with the other Senior Leadership team members for overseeing the culture and impact of the Hub team and wider partnership.

The post-holder will also be expected to operate in line with the overall mission and values of the School collaborating with School faculty, professional services and other research centres.

About You

You will be educated to graduate level with a mission focused, flexible, can-do approach to work, self-motivation, resilience and will proactively seek to drive improvement and adaptation within the team.

You will have demonstrable experience of successfully delivering complex, high-profile international development or public policy projects with experience of financial management, procurement, logistics, contracting & compliance and human resources.

As a collaborative leader you will be skilled at leading and managing high performing and happy teams both directly and as part of a collaborative matrix and partnership structure.

You will have first-class stakeholder engagement skills and be experienced in working with people at all levels and from a diverse range of backgrounds and perspectives.

Application Process

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