Cluster Academic Manager, Young Learners - London, United Kingdom - British Council
Description
We support peace and prosperity by building connections, understanding and trust between people in the UK and countries worldwide.
We work directly with individuals to help them gain the skills, confidence and connections to transform their lives and shape a better world in partnership with the UK. We support them to build networks and explore creative ideas, to learn English, to get a high-quality education and to gain internationally recognised qualifications.
Working with people in over 200 countries and territories, we are on the ground in more than 100 countries. In 2021–22 we reached 650 million people.
Local position title: Academic Manager, Young Learners
Why join us?
This is a unique and exciting opportunity to lead the Young Learner (YL) academic team in the region's largest YL centre. The post holder will work with colleagues to create a culture of learning, development and thought leadership to ensure all colleagues perform to the best of their abilities, and to improve customer satisfaction and retention in order to drive business growth.
Role Purpose
• To drive the continuous improvement of products and services, and innovation in meeting customer needs.
• To ensure consistency of standards in the delivery of new/existing products and services.
• To support centres to achieve product performance targets.
• To play an important role contributing to and delivering elements of the Teaching Excellence project to help meet its aims, with particular focus on the delivery of YL courses, which will lead to enhanced teaching performance and the highest standards of teaching and learning.
Main Accountabilities:
Product Management
• Oversees and, as necessary, advises on the implementation of approved products to ensure these are efficiently and effectively delivered.
• Ensures standardization of approach in product delivery for new/existing products and services as well as enhancements, through project management methodology and tools.
• Manages the testing and roll out of new products/pilots and develops a feedback cycle to ensure a continuous improvement process for all products and services.
• Provides input to product proposals into the Product Development Stage Gate process and manages projects through that process if necessary.
• Ensures agreed KPIs are embedded in the continuous improvement and country reporting processes.
• Supports the development and presentation of specific product, project or programme proposals, including the subject or sector specialism-related component of wider programmes, to ensure these are soundly based and gain approval.
Sector/subject expertise
Working with colleagues across the Academic strand; both Product and Teaching Excellence:
• Guides and oversee teaching staff to ensure that latest thinking, innovation and best practices in pedagogy and assessment are incorporated in products and enhancements.
• Ensures consistency, quality, and integrity of services across markets.
• Works with academic staff to ensure effective implementation of Teaching Excellence initiatives including:
- Teaching Standards and observation systems
- Teaching Excellence Action Plans (TEAP)
- Teaching Centre Performance Reviews (TCPR) and the utilisation of feedback and data gathering systems to understand teaching performance
- The organisation and delivery of specific training and Learning & Development (L&D) initiatives for teachers and other academic staff
- helping identify academic/teaching talent, and working with teams to develop this talent and to share best practice
- supporting EDI and SEND initiatives relevant to teaching
- supporting relevant Thought Leadership activity which may promote our teaching activity
Relationship & stakeholder management
• Proactively identifies and cultivates potential/actual partners for product or programme development and delivery and secures the successful achievement of income and impact objectives.
• Develops strong working relationships with leads in Operations, Marketing, Customer Services and Product teams to enable effective product/service development.
Commercial and financial management
• Using agreed corporate systems and processes, plans and manages the budget for a range of small/medium-sized projects and programmes, and conducts monthly and year-end reporting on income and expenditure, profitability and risk and other product KPIs.
Leadership & management
• Plans and prioritises own work activities, and those of wider project teams (many of which exist outside the direct management line), to ensure the effective delivery of diverse responsibilities and programme deliverables over a monthly to quarterly time horizon.
• Shares intelligence and ideas to support senior managers in identifying/developing ways in which the subject/sector specialism could make the most effective impact on the British Council's cultural relations and commercial strategies.
About You (essential requirements for the role):
• Experience of successful product management.
• Demonstrated experience working in an English Language learning management or assessment development role.
• Experience of working collaboratively with stakeholders across multiple sites / countries to achieve objectives.
• Proven experience and demonstrable success in coordinating/supervising/influencing others in an educational context.
• English at C2 level
• TEFL-Q or British Council recognized equivalent.
• Undergraduate degree or equivalent by experience.
Desirable requirements:
• Experience of product development for use across multiple sites.
• End-to-end product management experience.
• Project Management qualification