I. Background:
UNESCO is actively involved in the Global Partnership for Education- Education Sector Program Implementation Grant (GPE-ESPIG) program. The primary objective of the GPE-ESPIG program is to ensure that the most marginalized children, including those who are out-of-school or at risk of dropping out, gain access to quality learning opportunities. These opportunities are crucial for them to acquire relevant skills, build resilience, continue their education, and enhance their overall well-being. The GPE-ESPIG program consists of three key components:
• Access: The program focuses on facilitating safe and equitable access to learning for children and youth in Myanmar.
• Quality: The program aims to ensure quality teaching and learning experiences for children and youth in Myanmar. This involves strengthening the capacities of education personnel and fostering context-responsive, equity-focused learning resources and modalities that adapt to the evolving situation.
• System Strengthening: The program places emphasis on strengthening systems, management, coordination, and monitoring related to education in Myanmar.
As the Grant Agents (GAs) for this initiative, UNESCO, in collaboration with other national and international partners, will work collectively ensuring quality teaching and learning for children and youth in Myanmar by strengthening the capacities of education staff and fostering context-responsive, equity-focused learning resources and modalities adapted to the evolving situation. Therefore, educators are equipped with relevant capacities to provide continued and quality learning and necessary support to deliver education to children.
Through Strengthening Pre-Service Teacher Education in Myanmar (STEM) project, UNESCO strongly commits to address four fundamentally important aspects of pre-service teacher education in Myanmar: policy, curriculum, management and continuing professional development and inclusion and equity. Through ESPIG program, UNESCO continues to
support the teacher education development and ongoing professional development needs of in-service teachers reaching out to the ethnic and community school teachers. To initiate this, UNESCO will be conducting a needs assessment to better understand the current landscape of teacher education across Myanmar by states and the regions. Stakeholder mapping in the delivery of teacher trainings as well as teachers’ needs in professional development will be looked into in order to extend the ongoing support for teacher education development.
II. Objectives:
The objective of this Call for Proposal is to conduct a needs assessment of Teacher Education Sector in Myanmar.
III. Work Assignment:
Under the overall authority of Director of UNESCO Multisectoral Regional Office in Bangkok and the direct supervision of UNESCO Head of Project Office in Yangon, the Contractor will work closely with UNESCO Education Team to carry out the following tasks:
In particular, the Contractor shall:
• Meet with the UNESCO Yangon team to understand the approach and scope of the work, agree on methodology and objectives of the analytical tasks;
• Design a work plan for the delivery of needs assessment which includes the objectives, the data collection process and the approaches to analysis;
• Collect the updated data and information including but not limit to pre-/ in-service teacher education, Non-Formal Education (NFE) and private tutoring groups from the reliable sources and UNESCO;
• Conduct a desk review of the relevant documents and data to produce situational analysis of teachers in Myanmar;
• Draft the methodologies for needs assessment, set out plan for data collection agreed upon UNESCO, by identifying factors that will be assessed, and creating a list of partners and questions for each factor, together with the approaches/methods for this assessment;
• Produce a first draft of the needs assessment report consisting of no more than 50 pages outlining (excluding annex) with national and regional landscape of teacher education and learning and draft mapping of teacher education partners & stakeholders in selected areas Kachin, Kayah, Kayin and Shan;
• Produce a second draft of the needs assessment report with gaps and opportunities and in-depth analysis incorporating the comments received from UNESCO;
• Produce a draft policy brief no more than five pages summarizing the main points of the second draft of the needs assessment report;
• Produce a final version of needs assessment report, incorporating comments received from UNESCO;
• Produce the final version of a policy brief based on the feedback from UNESCO;
• All deliverables will be developed by the Contractor in collaboration with UNESCO and other education stakeholders. All comments received from UNESCO and its partners on the needs assessment report, must be thoroughly reviewed and addressed in the revision and finalization process;
• Prior to submission, the Contractor ensures that proper copyediting and proofreading should have been carried out for all deliverables and the relevant templates and formats should have been closely followed. The Contractor may be requested by UNESCO to revise the deliverables if they are determined by UNESCO to be unsatisfactory and/or incomplete against the required standard of quality. No additional payment will be made for any correction of the deliverables;
• Prepare handouts and presentation slides for interviews and consultation meetings;
• Facilitate/join consultation meetings with UNESCO and relevant stakeholders, when necessary; and
• Communicate with UNESCO on a regular basis to update on the progress of the assignments.
IV. Technical Considerations for Content Production
The Contractor may choose the application most suitable for the production of the analytical products. However, all products should be fully editable on standard Windows MS Office tools, without need for purchasing other licenses. It is recommended the Contractor utilize applications requiring minimal calibration and interface mastery, especially in terms of repeated editing during the later stages of development and future reuse.
V. Deliverables and Timeline:
The Contractor shall submit to UNESCO the following deliverables in English and in editable format such as MS Words and/or MS Excel:
Deliverables
Timeline
- Work plan
23rd August 2023 - List of the partners and a set of questions for needs assessment
28th August 2023 - First draft of needs assessment with PowerPoint Slides
22nd September 2023 - Second draft of needs assessment with PowerPoint Slides
23rd October 2023 - Draft policy brief paper with PowerPoint Slides
6th November 2023 - Final version of needs assessment with PowerPoint Slides
24th November 2023 - Final version of policy brief with PowerPoint Slides
30th November 2023
VI. Required Qualifications for Specialized Knowledge/Experience:
Organization
Required Qualifications:
• Data analysis, producing data visualizations and mapping education data sources and gaps requires a high level technical/professional expertise, capacity to analyze and visualize data, and expertise on quantitative data analysis and use of different data sources;
• Organization should have 2 to 3 years of relevant experience;
• Demonstrated competency with developing and producing quantitative and qualitative analysis for policy level requirements, preferably in development and/or education context; and
• Ability to produce high quality content on tight deadlines.
DesirableQualifications:
• Familiarity with Myanmar education and/or development context; and
• Previous work experience with UN agencies.
Personnel/Staff who will lead the activities
Required qualifications:
• Bachelor’ degree in economics, social sciences, development, statistics, educational sciences, or other related discipline;
• Minimum 4 years of relevant work experience;
• Excellent planning and organizational skills;
• Excellent communication and a concern for transparency and diligence;
• Ability to provide visualizations which are comprehensible, attractive and which demonstrate analytical insights from data;
• Ability to evaluate reliability of data sources for analytical use and monitoring purposes; and
• Ability to write analytical policy text based on data analysis findings
Desirable qualifications:
• Master’s degree in economics, social sciences, development, statistics, educational sciences, or other related discipline;
• Minimum 5 years of relevant work experience; and
• Previous experience working with UN organizations.
How to apply
VII. How to apply:
Qualified Organization/Institution are invited to submit the following to UNESCO Yangon Project Office clearly referencing “Needs assessment – Myanmar teacher education sector”:
• Technical proposal: Outline and methodology for undertaking data collection, data analysis, potential data visualizations, and education data sources in Myanmar; Detailed work plan showing the assignment’s important activities and milestones;
• Financial proposal: Detailed quotation to produce the work describing all necessary costs;
• Two relevant examples of previously carried out data analysis showcasing policy text writing, and data visualizations preferably from development and/or education context; and
• Curriculum Vitae of key consultant(s) carrying out the work.
UNESCO places great emphasis on ensuring that the objectives of the work assignment, as described in the Terms of Reference, are met. Accordingly, in evaluating the proposals for the assignment, attention will focus first and foremost on the technical elements. From those proposals deemed suitable in terms of the criteria in the Terms of Reference, UNESCO shall select the proposal that offers the Organization best value for money.
Your application should reach yangon@unesco.org by email no later than 17:00 Hours (Yangon time) on 9 August 2023.
Only short-listed organization/institution will be contacted.
see the ToR link ->https://themimu.info/sites/themimu.info/files/jobs/ToR_for_Needs_Assessment_of_Teachers_in_Myanmar.pdf