Director of Programmes
Candidate Pack
October 2026
Global Schools Forum (GSF) connects and strengthens a global community of over 200 non-state education organisations across 70+ countries. Since 2017, we have become a leading accelerator for locally-led education innovation in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, supporting non-state education organisations to innovate, deepen impact, and achieve scale.
We work as a global learning community, innovation accelerator, and partnership builder. We connect local leadership, share knowledge and insights, incubate and diffuse promising education solutions, and engage in policy-shaping dialogue to strengthen education systems. Our community collectively reaches 135 million children, and our Labs and Impact Accelerator programmes have supported innovations that now reach an additional one million children with better quality education and care.
Our vision remains that all children realise their potential through safe access to quality education. Join us at a moment of real momentum.
Role Purpose
This is a rare opportunity to shape how GSF’s programmes are delivered, and how well our largest team is set up to deliver them. As Director of Programmes, you will sit on our Senior Management Team (SMT) and take strategic ownership of the portfolio that sits at the heart of GSF’s work. Visit our website to view the full job pack.
Key responsibilities
Programme leadership and delivery (40%)
- Portfolio ownership: oversee the design, delivery, and quality of GSF’s programmes portfolio, spanning foundational learning, early childhood education and development, and a growing body of secondary education work.
- Technical collaboration: work with technical directors and associate directors across each portfolio area, including for Foundational Learning and Early Years.
- Programme quality: establish and maintain clear standards for programme design, implementation, monitoring, and learning across all workstreams.
Operational excellence (25%)
- Continuous improvement: identify opportunities to improve operational delivery across the portfolio.
- Cross-project learning: facilitate learning across projects, connecting the dots across programmes so that good practice travels rather than staying siloed.
- Standard operating procedures: create and implement the standard operating procedures that keep delivery consistent, well-governed, and efficient.
Team leadership (20%)
- Team management: manage GSF’s largest team.
- Resourcing: put in place, and own, the processes for allocating team members across projects.
- Cross-functional deployment: work with functional leads across the portfolio.
Organisational leadership (15%)
- External representation: represent GSF in key external events.
- Community strategy: lead the Programmes vertical’s part in implementing GSF’s community engagement strategy.
- Diffusion and replication: champion two-way diffusion as standard practice.
- Senior management: participate in the SMT, contributing to organisational strategy
Person Specification
We’re looking for someone who combines strong programme leadership with operational rigour
Essential
- Significant senior experience leading education programmes at scale, with deep understanding of education program implementation in low- and middle- income countries and of the challenges and opportunities facing locally-led education organisations.
- Sound understanding and passion for building trust with a community of partner organisations to inform programmes and ensure that promising practices spread and get adopted elsewhere. Ability to engage with practitioners, as well as governments and funders to create collective movements that change practices in the sector.
- Strong commitment to locally-led approaches and to genuine partnership with the organisations GSF supports, listening carefully, responding to need, and avoiding the imposition of external agendas.
- A track record of leading complex, multi-workstream programme portfolios, managing multiple teams, funders, and delivery contexts simultaneously with rigour and care.
- A strong track record of managing large, distributed teams, including setting up the systems needed to allocate people well across multiple projects.
- Experience working closely with technical experts, such as technical directors or advisors, to translate technical excellence into high-quality delivery.
- A track record of improving operational delivery: spotting inefficiencies, building standard operating procedures, and embedding learning across projects.
- Strong strategic judgement, able to prioritise across a broad and varied portfolio.
- Experience working at, or preparing materials for, senior leadership or board level.
- A genuine commitment to GSF’s mission and values.
Desirable
- Direct experience of programme implementation in foundational literacy and numeracy or early childhood education and development programming in low-resource or emergency-affected contexts.
- Experience in a membership or network organisation.
- Experience of AI in education
Terms and Conditions
Location:
GSF is a fully remote organisation. We welcome applications within a time zone of GMT-2 to GMT+5:30. Please note that we are unable to offer visa sponsorship for this role.
Some international travel may be required.
Salary
GSF uses location-based salary bands to ensure fair and equitable pay across regions. Our baseline compensation is anchored to the UK market salary range. As we hire globally, your final offer will be adjusted to reflect local market data of your country of residence.
Examples of localised salary expectations for this role:
United Kingdom £80,080 – £86,320
Kenya* £60,060—£64,740
India* INR 7,095,922 – INR7,645,157
*The final package will include health insurance
Contract: Permanent
Hours: Full Time, typically 9am-5pm in your time zone, but with significant flexibility. Given that we work across different time zones, some non-traditional hours for early or late calls may be required.
Responsible to: CEO
Responsible for: Two Associate Directors, one manager
Anticipated Start Date: As soon as possible, subject to any notice periods.
Our Benefits Include:
- A senior leadership role
- 35 fully flexible holiday days (including flexible national holidays) increasing with tenure, and generous family-friendly policies.
- Generous employee pension scheme.
- Flexible working options.
- Co-working space allowance.
- Personal learning and development budget.
- Access to GSF events.
- Access to the learning platform iHasco.
- Annual team retreat.
How to Apply
Visit www.globalschoolsforum.org to view the full job pack.
Recruitment Process:
- Application Deadline: Friday 6th November.
We are committed to inclusive recruitment and welcome requests for reasonable adjustments at any stage of the recruitment process. Please email info@globalschoolsforum.org to let us know how we can help.
If you apply, we will process your personal data in accordance with our Data Privacy Policy.
Please note we are unable to offer visa sponsorship for this role.
Equal Opportunities
GSF is committed to a fair and inclusive workplace, where everyone can be themselves and thrive.