Sr. Project Associate

Background

Leadership For Skilled Education Foundation (branded as Leadership for Equity , LFE) is a non-profit organisation based in Pune, Maharashtra, working to strengthen India’s public education system so that every child learns and thrives. We envision public education systems that refuse to let children down.

LFE partners with state and district governments across multiple states—including Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, and Haryana—to improve teaching practices and build sustained academic support structures within the public system. Our work is anchored in the belief that public education systems are the gatekeepers of social equity, and strengthening them is essential to ensuring that every child has access to strong foundational and future-ready learning.

Approach

LFE’s systems-change approach focuses on improving classroom practice and enabling government ownership through three core levers:

• •Co-creating high-quality curricular resources and building teacher capacity
• •Developing academic leadership to coach and mentor teachers
• •Providing data-driven advisory support and policy implementation guidance

Our model empowers teachers as instructional leaders and embeds long-term support through government-run mentor cadres, continuous classroom observation cycles, and in-system academic structures. Technology plays a critical role, including an in-house Classroom Observation App for real-time monitoring and a WhatsApp-based teacher support chatbot for contextual resource delivery.

The approach is iterative and context-responsive, grounded in classroom realities and tailored to state and district needs. Implementation varies across geographies, whether working directly with teachers or through government-appointed mentors, ensuring relevance and feasibility within existing structures. A continuous feedback loop of training, observation, and coaching moves beyond one-time interventions toward sustained practice change. All programs are co-designed and co-implemented with government partners to ensure scale, sustainability, and systemic ownership, ultimately leading to improved student learning outcomes in foundational and future literacy.

About the Haryana State Project

The Leadership For Equity team works in partnership with SCERT Haryana to strengthen teaching-learning systems through state-wide academic reform initiatives. The partnership spans classroom observation and mentoring systems, teacher professional development, digital learning platforms including DIKSHA, Future Literacy initiatives, and other system-strengthening program. LFE works closely with SCERT and district education teams to design, implement, monitor, and continuously improve these initiatives through capacity building, field implementation, data-driven decision-making, and institutional strengthening

Scope of Work:

• •Working with DSE Haryana to design, implement, and strengthen state-wide academic reform initiatives focused on improving teaching-learning processes and institutional capacity.
• •Supporting the implementation and continuous improvement of classroom observation and mentoring systems by strengthening implementation processes, monitoring mechanisms, and quality assurance across state, district, and block levels.
• •Co-planning and co-implementing teacher and officer capacity-building program through blended learning, face-to-face workshops, and other professional development initiatives at scale.
• •Supporting Future Literacy and other innovative education initiatives that build future-ready competencies among teachers and students through curriculum, pedagogy, and capacity-building efforts.
• •Collaborating with SCERT, DIETs, district and block education teams to institutionalize sustainable systems, strengthen program ownership, and improve implementation quality across state-wide initiatives.

About the Role

The Senior Project Associate (SPA) will play a key role in strengthening LFE's partnership with the Haryana education system, with a particular focus on government coordination, senior stakeholder management, and effective implementation of LFE's program.

The SPA will serve as an important bridge between LFE's program team and senior officials in the Directorate of School Education (DSE), SCERT Haryana, and other government institutions. The role will involve regularly communicating LFE's progress, priorities, evidence and recommendations to government stakeholders; coordinating reviews and follow-ups; understanding emerging government priorities; and ensuring alignment between LFE's work and the state's education priorities.

Alongside stakeholder management, the SPA will contribute to program implementation, field engagement, partnerships, documentation and internal team coordination. The role requires strong ownership, judgement, communication and the ability to independently manage multiple stakeholders and priorities.

Roles and Responsibilities

Government & Senior Stakeholder Management – 40%

• •Serve as the key coordination point between LFE and senior officials at DSE Haryana, ensuring purposeful, timely, and professional engagement aligned with government priorities.
• •Build and nurture trusted relationships with senior officials across DSE, SCERT, DIETs and district/block education structures through consistent engagement, responsiveness and understanding of government needs.
• •Enable effective decision-making and review forums by coordinating agendas, presentations, data, evidence, discussion notes and follow-ups for key government meetings.
• •Translate LFE’s program insights, field realities and evidence into clear recommendations and decision points relevant to senior government stakeholders.
• •Understand and anticipate government priorities, requirements and emerging needs, and translate these into actionable inputs for LFE’s program and leadership teams.
• •Coordinate across LFE teams to ensure alignment on government engagement, enabling timely responses, permissions, approvals, reviews and resolution of implementation bottlenecks.
• •Track and drive closure of key decisions and commitments arising from government engagements, working with relevant teams and stakeholders to ensure timely action.
• •Maintain strong field-level connect and contextual understanding to ensure that LFE’s engagement with senior officials is grounded in implementation realities, stakeholder needs and evidence from the field.
• •Identify and proactively manage stakeholder risks and sensitivities, working with LFE leadership to address concerns and sustain constructive government relationships.
• •Support in strategically positioning the organisation’s purpose, evidence and learnings within government priorities, reviews and decision-making forums, with a focus on long-term government ownership.

Project implementation (40%)

• •Support the planning and execution of state-level programs across classroom observation, teacher professional development, Future Literacy, and other academic reform initiatives.
• •Conduct regular field visits to districts and blocks to monitor program implementation and provide implementation support.
• •Undertake classroom observation quality assurance processes, process adherence checks, and documentation of implementation learnings.
• •Support planning and facilitation of state, district, and block-level trainings, workshops, consultations, and review meetings.
• •Lead the maintenance and regular updating of state-level M&E dashboards, particularly for teacher observations and program implementation, and translate data into periodic insights and documentation to inform program reviews, course correction, and decision-making.
• •Support documentation of best practices, implementation learnings, and program reports.

Partnerships & Liaisoning at District Level (10%)

• •Work on planning/designing the overall partnership strategy in conjunction with the project manager and the team.
• •Showcasing current LFE’s work to state and district o