Data Analyst Consultant at Rising Academies

The context:

Across the developing world, more children than ever are in school – but they are not learning. A recent study estimated that less than 1% of school children in Sub-Saharan Africa attend a school where the teaching meets basic standards of quality. At Rising Academies, we’re changing that, and we want your help. Our mission is to create the best schools and the most powerful teaching and learning tools for the people who need it most. We’re one of the fastest-growing quality-focused education companies in Africa and a Certified B Corp®.

About us:

We own and operate our own great value private schools, partner with governments to improve the quality of public school systems, and use our content and technology to help other education providers.

Founded in Sierra Leone in 2014, we provided emergency education to children kept out of school by the Ebola Epidemic before opening our first school in April 2015. Today, we serve more than 250,000 students across more than 900 schools in Sierra Leone, Liberia, Ghana and now Rwanda.

Through a great curriculum, intensive teacher coaching and actionable data, we help teachers and school leaders bring quality to every classroom. And we get results: independent studies show that rising students make more than twice the progress of their peers in comparable schools.

At Rising we keep the safety and well-being of our students at the heart of what we do. All Rising employees are expected to abide by the Child Protection Policy, and to share in our commitment to meeting the highest standards of safeguarding excellence and protecting children from harm.

About the role:

At Rising, we are obsessed with student learning. At the close of the academic year, schools across our government partnerships and private school networks conduct summative assessments. We use these assessments to measure our progress and impact. We are looking for a technically savvy and client-focused Data Analyst Consultant to review, clean, analyze and report on the results from our education programs. Each program follows its evaluation design, and we group them into three categories:

● Standardized assessments across Ghana, Liberia, Rwanda, and Sierra Leone (2 assessments - EGRA, EGMA)

● Impact analysis in Rwanda (4 assessments - EGRA, EGMA, Remedial Math and Literacy Assessment)

● Impact analysis in Sierra Leone (2 assessments - EGMA, Upper Primary Math assessment)

These assessments are conducted across seven programs and the review and analysis of the data will require engaging with the academics and data teams across these programs.

Depending on the program, written reports and presentations will be required to present the results.

The Data Analyst Consultant will:

● Compile all data sets from across program teams

● Identify data issues and advise on how to correct them with country data teams

● Conduct data cleaning and endline dataset creation as per guidelines

● Conduct data analyses for each of the three assessment categories

● Prepare and present reports to program and management teams

● Prepare results slides for each assessment category and present to Rising’s management team

● Write the methodology and results sections of reports for the Rwanda and Sierra Leone specific assessments

Final Deliverables:

● Document data compilation and cleaning process

● Cleaned and standardized datasets ready for analysis (.xlsx and .dta or equivalent)

● Do-files for each step of the process for each activity (this looks like: master, corrections, cleaning and analyses do-files). Do-files should be clean and tidy, including comments and notes from the analyst.

● Presentation materials, in line with Rising’s branding guidelines, with key findings for each project

● Written methodology and results sections for designated program reports

● Live presentations to stakeholders

Qualifications and Experience:

● Demonstrated experience conducting econometrics analyses with education data. Specifically understanding experimental and quasi-experimental analyses.

● Demonstrated proficiency using Stata for statistical analysis. Candidates with strong skills in R or Python might be considered.

● Demonstrated experience writing reports and analysis write-ups.

About you:

● You have a keen interest in student learning and leveraging data tools to improve our programs.

● You have excellent verbal and written communication skills and interpersonal skills.

● You demonstrate people skills; you must be able to collaborate effectively with diverse personalities and skill sets and enjoy constructive conflict.

● You have a strong track record of professionalism, trustworthiness and working independently sometimes.

● You possess strong analytical and reasoning skills with the ability to adapt to changes in a fast-paced, agile environment.

● You are proactive, self-driven and can take initiative and problem-solve.

Location and reporting:

This is a remote position. Consultant may work full-time or part-time at their discretion.

Timelines:

Data sets will be available on a rolling basis starting in mid-June. Final deliverables will be due 6-weeks after the submission of the final data set which is anticipated by the end of July. The final deliverable deadlines may be subject to change based on the agreed-upon start date, the data collection process in each program, and final contracting discussions.