Program Manager

Saarthi Education

Job Description: Program Manager, Practice Lab

Location: Mathura

Type: Full-time, field-intensive

Reporting to: Program Director

Saarthi Education: Overview

Saarthi Education is a non-profit organisation focused on improving foundational numeracy outcomes in low-resource schools by strengthening a core but underdeveloped element of classroom instruction: practice. We design and implement a structured, level-based practice system that provides each child with daily, personalised arithmetic practice 

Our approach enables teachers to deliver targeted practice with minimal additional effort and has demonstrated consistent improvements in student learning outcomes. Our long-term aim is to integrate high-quality, targeted practice into mainstream pedagogy so that all children can achieve foundational mastery.

Practice Lab: Overview

Practice Lab is a rapid, comparative testing ground for both tech- and offline-based practice products in Indian government schools. We implement multiple FLN solutions under the same conditions, like exact timetables, tablet ratios, and field support, to understand which tools drive the highest learning gains and why. The Lab also experiments with implementation models (dosage, device sharing, helper support) to define what it takes to deliver EdTech with high fidelity at scale. Insights from the Practice Lab inform product owners about potential improvements to their products and guide government and donors in making evidence-based decisions about which products and models to adopt system-wide. 

Program Manager: Role summary

Saarthi Education is launching Practice Lab, an ambitious effort to understand what truly works for EdTech-based solutions in India's government schools. We will rigorously test multiple FLN products across government schools and uncover insights that can shape how millions of children learn.

The Program Manager sits at the heart of this mission. You will bring this vision to life every day by enabling schools, supporting field workers and teachers, ensuring children get meaningful learning time, and making sure the Lab runs consistently and with high fidelity. This is an intensely hands-on role: 80% field, 20% desk. It's designed for someone who feels energised by real classrooms, who can build trust with school leaders, who can guide teams through challenges, and who believes that excellent execution is what turns ideas into impact. If you are someone who wants to shape how practice-based solutions (whether tech or offline) can reach and transform learning for children in India, this is a role where your leadership will matter every single day.

Responsibilities

The role focuses on establishing the gold standard for EdTech implementation in Indian government schools. The responsibilities can be categorised into three main sections:

1. On-ground operations

• Train and manage a team of 50 women field workers across the block.
• Set up an EdTech Practice lab in each school: hardware, timetables, storage, SOPs
• Design and implement school-level processes (e.g., tablet allocation, session flow, troubleshooting, safeguarding).
• Conduct regular school visits to ensure exceptionally high fidelity in daily usage.
• Use dashboards to monitor usage/learning data and take corrective actions.
• Firefight any operational challenges: device failures, low usage, field team absenteeism, timetable changes, etc.
• Build strong relationships with Headmasters and teachers; appoint and coach school-level usage champions.

1. Government relations

• Build strong relationships with district-level officials (DEO, BEOs, ARPs).
• Provide monthly updates and presentations to officials with clear, data-backed insights.
• Proactively manage risks related to school calendars, government events, and staff transfers.

Skills needed for the role

1. Strong execution muscle

• Proven ability to run large-scale field operations in government schools with discipline and reliability. An ideal candidate will have around 3-5 years of relevant on-ground execution experience.
• Skilled at designing, refining, and documenting processes/SOPs that bring clarity and consistency to operations.
• Deep comfort with being on-ground, solving real-time challenges, and ensuring daily fidelity in implementation.
• Strong data orientation, including the ability to read dashboards, spot trends, identify root causes, and act quickly.
• High attention to detail and a bias for structured, evidence-driven decision-making

1. Entrepreneurial leadership

• Thrives in ambiguity and brings structure, clarity, and momentum to complex, fast-changing environments.
• Hands-on, action-oriented, and comfortable doing whatever it takes to keep the programme running smoothly.
• Strong people leadership skills and ability to motivate, coach, and build accountability within distributed field teams.
• Thinks like an owner: anticipates challenges, solves problems proactively, and consistently pushes for high-quality execution.

1. Technical and communication fluency

• Able to translate field realities into crisp insights for internal teams, product partners, and government stakeholders.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills to explain processes, give instructions, and share updates in a clear, simple, and structured way.
• Comfortable working with Android tablets, basic troubleshooting, device setup, and understanding common tech issues in school environments.
• Able to quickly diagnose app-level problems, data sync issues, and communicate them clearly to product teams for fast resolution.

Why this role matters

This is an opportunity to shape one of India's first Practice efficacy labs (EdTech and offline products). You will:

• Work closely with an International foundation's EdTech team 
• Your work will directly influence how EdTech is deployed reliably in low-resource settings and guide policy-level decisions on FLN interventions.
• You will be the first to build the operational blueprint for a national EdTech Efficacy Lab and guide which EdTech and offline products the government scales. 

Compensation

We follow standard non-profit compensation benchmarks. We will share the full compensation range openly with all shortlisted candidates before starting the selection process, so you have complete clarity from the beginning.

Application process

To apply, please fill out this tshort form. Here is a brief overview of the selection process:

Step 1: Intro call - A 45-minute call with shortlisted candidates to discuss the role in more detail. 

Step 2: Process Exercise - A 4-hour live exercise followed by an hour of debrief 

Step 3: Fieldwork - A 6-hour field-level exercise followed by an hour of debrief