Consultant -Senior Psychometrician for the Foundational Learning Study, Education section, Islamabad, Pakistan, 4 months (Remote with trip)

Consultant -Senior Psychometrician for the Foundational Learning Study, Education section, Islamabad, Pakistan, 4 months (Remote with trip)

Job no: 596514
Contract type: Consultant
Duty Station: Islamabad
Level: Consultancy
Location: Pakistan
Categories: Education

Contract Duration – 4 months

Working arrangement: Home Based with travel

UNICEF works in over 190 countries and territories to save children’s lives, defend their rights, and help them fulfill their potential, from early childhood through adolescence.

At UNICEF, we are committed, passionate, and proud of what we do for as long as we are needed. Promoting the rights of every child is not just a job – it is a calling.

UNICEF is a place where careers are built. We offer our staff diverse opportunities for professional and personal development that will help them reinforce a sense of purpose while serving children and communities across the world. We welcome everyone who wants to belong and grow in a diverse and passionate culture, coupled with an attractive compensation and benefits package.

Visit our website to learn more about what we do at UNICEF.

TERMS OF REFERENCE

The Pakistan Institute of Education (PIE), established under the Ministry of Federal Education and Professional Training (MoFEPT), houses the National Assessment Wing (NAW), which is mandated to design and implement assessments that measure student learning outcomes at national scale, including the National Achievement Test (NAT) and the Foundational Learning Study (FLS).

With technical support from the American Institutes for Research (AIR) delivered principally through Dr. Abdullah Ferdous, Principal Researcher/Psychometrician and funding channelled through the World Bank's Data & Research in Education (DARE) technical assistance programme, NAW/PIE has successfully developed, piloted and administered NAT-2026 and FLS-2026. FLS-2026 is Pakistan's first nationally representative assessment of Grade 3 literacy and numeracy, anchored in the Federal Foundational Learning Policy 2024 and designed for alignment with the Global Proficiency Framework (GPF) and Minimum Proficiency Levels (MPLs) so that Pakistan can report against SDG indicator 4.1.1.

Large-scale field administration of FLS-2026 has now been completed across public and private school networks, and the dataset is ready for psychometric analysis, scaling and national reporting. However, AIR's formally funded technical support concluded at the close of field administration, and the World Bank/DARE-funded scope does not extend to a number of technically critical, time-sensitive activities needed to convert the collected data into credible, internationally comparable national evidence, including extending large-scale administration to English-medium schools, completing psychometric analysis and benchmarking across all three languages of instruction (English, Urdu, Sindhi), and preparing the SDG 4.1.1 reporting documentation. NAW/PIE has formally requested continued technical support to close this gap.

The objective of this assignment is for UNICEF Pakistan to provide targeted technical assistance to NAW/PIE for the specific set of NAT- and FLS-related activities that fall outside the current World Bank/DARE scope, so that Pakistan's first national foundational learning evidence base is completed, benchmarked, and reported to international standards without loss of methodological continuity or delay.

If you would like to know more about this consultancy, please review the complete Terms of Reference here: TOR x TMC0007033.pdf

To qualify as an advocate for every child you will have...

• Education: An advanced PhD university degree in psychometrics, educational measurement, statistics or a related field.
• Work Experience: At least 10 years in large-scale learning assessment, including item response theory (IRT), item calibration, equating and scaling.
• Skills (optional):
• Benchmarking: Proven experience setting foundational learning benchmarks aligned with the GPF/MPL framework.
• SDG reporting: Working knowledge of UIS/GAML technical criteria and SDG 4.1.1 reporting requirements.
• Multilingual assessment: Experience designing and analysing assessments across several languages of instruction.
• Regional experience: Experience in South Asia, and in working with national assessment bodies and ministries, is desirable.
• Capacity building: A track record of building the capacity of government assessment teams.
• Language Requirements: Excellent written and spoken English
• Direct experience of the FLS-2026 instrument design, pilot analysis or large-scale administration is a strong asset.
• Technical requirements: