Head of Higher Education at British Council

The British Council is the UK’s international organisation for cultural relations and educational opportunities. We create friendly knowledge and understanding between the people of the UK and other countries. We do this by making a positive contribution to the UK and the countries we work with – changing lives by creating opportunities, building connections and engendering trust.
 
We work with over 100 countries across the world in the fields of arts and culture, English language, education and civil society. Each year we reach over 20 million people face-to-face and more than 500 million people online, via broadcasts and publications. Founded in 1934, we are a UK charity governed by Royal Charter and a UK public body.

We are recruiting to fill the position below:

Job Title: Head of Higher Education

Location: Abuja

Role Purpose

• To lead the development and delivery of Higher Education portfolio in Nigeria (including partnership work).
• This post will lead programmes/projects to a high standard and in compliance with British Council policies and procedures. It could also lead on specific components of large programmes. Acts as Senior Responsible Officer, if required, on programmes with an appropriate level of complexity and may manage large and geographically dispersed programme delivery teams.

Main Accountabilities
Leadership & Management:

• Lead the delivery of Innovation African Universities (IAU) programme in Nigeria (as part of Going Global Partnerships), International Student Mobility and Marketing, Insight and Engagement, Alumni UK, GREAT Study UK Campaign and any other HE programmes in the country.
• Could act as SRO on programmes or projects with some complexity and ambiguity.
• Leads large, diverse and geographically dispersed teams
• Builds capacity and capability in programme management in delivery teams.
• Champions Equality Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) within the programme and empowers team members to effectively identify opportunities for mainstreaming EDI in the programme delivery.

Relationship & Stakeholders:

• Responsible for relationships with partners/funders clients and internal stakeholders at a programme/project level.
• Holds delivery partners, team members and consultants to account including through effective supply chain management.
• Communicates on a variety of platforms about the programme or project.

Business Development:

• Contributes to concept notes, proposals and bid documents as required, including partnership work in HE.
• Understands the market in which our programmes operate, plays a proactive role in co-ordination with other organisations/funders, spots opportunities and shares. intelligence about the market through appropriate channels

Commercial and Financial Management:

• Monitors and reports on project life-cycle.
• Ensures sound internal/external financial management, planning and reporting is in place
• Oversight of Client invoicing process (if this is a contract).
• Ensure effective management of project profit and loss accounts.

Programme Management:

• Ensures that programme/project is delivered according to all corporate (and where relevant, client) standards of quality and compliance (for example safeguarding, EDI, supply change management, social value and conflict sensitivity).
• Work with multiple colleagues to support design of results-based and impact-driven programmes and is responsible for planning and re-design as required
• Responsibility for managing all contractual obligations on programme or project
• Convenes risk meetings, updates risk register and either mitigates or escalates risk
• Manages procurement, grants management and due diligence on programmes
• Responsible for project/programme management reporting

Role Specific Knowledge and Experience
Essential requirements:

•  Project management or equivalent qualification
• Extensive experience (more than 5 years) of leading and managing programmes or large projects.
• Experience of managing multi country or large programmes that have met project closure standards and passed audits.
• Experience of working with several different funding sources and knowledge of different programme frameworks and compliance rules.
• Experience of working within a consortium arrangement or with other funding partners or sponsors and management of associated contracts.
• Extensive experience of managing complex, senior, client, stakeholder and partner relationships and reporting requirements.
• Experience of identifying risk, mitigating risk and monitoring risk and reporting risk through appropriate channels.
• Experience of developing MEL frrameworks and designing data collection mechanisms
• Experience of leading a large, diverse, dispersed project or programme team
• Experience of presenting and communicating programme success to a range of external audiences
• Significant understanding and experience in Higher Education in Nigeria.

Application Closing Date
28th May, 2024.