WAIG builds and deploys AI-based tools for foundational literacy and numeracy assessment and instruction support across multiple countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. This spans AI-based oral reading fluency assessment (ASR-driven) and AI-based numeracy assessment and diagnostic tools (OCR-driven), deployed in partnership with governments and implementation partners.
This role owns the pedagogical and assessment integrity of the full FLN portfolio, and its program delivery, ensuring AI tools are grounded in sound learning sciences and assessment design, correctly adapted to each language and curriculum context, and deployed in a way that produces credible, usable data for teachers, governments, and funders.
This is a bridging role. The person must be able to sit between curriculum and assessment specialists, data scientists, and government education officials, and translate between all three.
Responsibilities1. Pedagogical Design, Assessment Design, and Quality Assurance- Own the instructional and assessment design logic across both literacy and numeracy tools: item construction, scoring rubrics, benchmarks, grade-level calibration, and alignment to national curriculum frameworks.
- Apply learning sciences principles (how children acquire literacy and numeracy skills, common error patterns, developmental progression) to shape product and tool design decisions, not just validate them after the fact.
- Validate that AI-scored outputs are pedagogically and psychometrically sound, not just technically accurate.
- Work with literacy, numeracy, and assessment specialists and local content partners to adapt assessment content across multiple languages and contexts.
- Ensure numeracy tool design reflects sound classroom pedagogy and progression logic, not just answer-correctness scoring.
2. Program Delivery
- Manage end-to-end field data collection cycles across both literacy and numeracy instruments: enumerator training, school-level rollout, quality checks, troubleshooting.
- Own the operating calendar across multiple countries, sequencing rollout against school terms and government academic calendars.
- Build and maintain an implementation tracker covering timelines, sample sizes, data quality flags, and blockers, disaggregated by literacy and numeracy workstreams.
3. Government and Partner Interface- Serve as the pedagogy and assessment-credible face of WAIG to Ministries of Education, teacher training institutes, and implementation partners on both FLN domains.
- Translate assessment outputs into policy-usable insights for government counterparts, at classroom, district, or system level.
- Support proposal and concept note development with technically sound literacy, numeracy, and assessment sections for institutional funders.
4. Evidence and Reporting- Design M&E frameworks that connect AI-scored literacy and numeracy data to learning outcome claims that hold up to funder and government scrutiny.
- Own FLN workstream inputs for donor reporting across both product lines.
- Flag where AI tool performance, pedagogical validity, or assessment reliability diverge, before a government or funder counterpart catches it.
Skills & QualificationMust-have
- 5-7 years in education program management, with direct experience in foundational learning and/or assessment design (literacy and/or numeracy, learning sciences background, or equivalent).
- Direct field experience running programs in low-resource, government school settings.
- Comfort working with data (assessment scores, sampling, basic statistics, item-level analysis) without necessarily having a technical background.
- Experience managing multi-country or multi-partner program operations.
Strong plus
- Formal training or applied experience in learning sciences, assessment design, or psychometrics.
- Experience spanning both literacy AND numeracy pedagogy, not just one.
- Familiarity with ASR/OCR or other AI-based assessment tools, or prior edtech pilot experience.
- Existing relationships with Ministries of Education or teacher training institutions in relevant geographies.
- Local language fluency relevant to program countries.
- Experience writing for institutional donor audiences.
