Early Learning Costing and Finance Consultant (remote with travel for 10 months)

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For every child, the right to education

How can you make a difference?

The Government of Solomon Islands (SIG) has committed to a national reform program intended to support economic mobility and social equity as key government priority areas. This initiative includes rolling out free education from 2027, with the potential to include Early Childhood Education (ECE) through to the Solomon Islands National University (SINU) and TAFE/TVET institutions, though the precise details and plans are still in development.

Solomon Islands has consistently demonstrated a strong commitment to education financing, allocating one of the largest shares of the national budget to the education sector. Education expenditure has exceeded international benchmarks, with approximately 25-30% of government expenditure directed toward education in recent years. In July 2026, the GREAT Government of Solomon Islands released its policy document outlining key policy priority areas, including free education as a flagship government priority. While the government has previously invested in education through school grants and subsidies, many families still face high indirect costs. In September 2026, the Prime Minister reaffirmed this commitment in Parliament, indicating that the Ministry of Education and Human Resources Development (MEHRD) had costed the full roll-out at an additional SBD 1.1 billion, and that Government had returned those figures to the education sector for further review ahead of a bipartisan discussion and submission to Parliament. As part of these efforts, the Solomon Islands Government (SIG) established the National Free Education Policy Taskforce, consisting of core government ministries, education providers, civil society representatives, and development partners under the leadership of the Ministry of Education and Human Resource Development and overall guidance and close collaboration with the Office of the Prime Minister and Cabinet (OPMC).

MEHRD has asked partners, including UNICEF, for technical support to conduct the economic and policy analysis needed to translate the free education vision into practical, fiscally sustainable costed pathways, models, and options. The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT), Australia, is supporting MEHRD and other partners on the wider analysis, costing, and planning required for the roll-out by providing technical support focused on policy, grants, and the overall cost of education.

Early learning in the Solomon Islands spans ECE for 3–4-year-olds and the Primary Preparation Year (PPY) for 5-yearolds. PPY was introduced in 2018 and rolled out nationwide in 2020; it sits within the basic education system and is the entry point to formal schooling. ECE remains outside the formal system and is delivered largely through communitybased provision, although the Education Act 2023 provides for the registration of early childhood education centers, recognizes ECE as a standalone sub-sector, and establishes a pathway toward formalization. Neither is compulsory: under the Education Act 2023, compulsory education runs from Year 1, at age six, through to Year 9 or age 16. MEHRD has committed to full enrolment of all five-year-olds by 2030, in line with SDG target 4.2, and is currently developing an ECE curriculum for 3- and 4-year-olds.

The country-led evaluation of the PPY programme 2018–2022, completed in August 2023 by MEHRD and UNICEF showed the net enrolment ratio for five-year-olds rising from 21.7 per cent in 2016 to 29.5 per cent in 2018 and 32.3 per cent in 2019 nationally, and averaging 36.8 per cent across the four evaluated provinces in 2022 — with wide variation, from 12 per cent in Honiara City to 33 per cent in Malaita and 51 per cent in Guadalcanal and Makira. Cost was identified as a binding constraint: parents reported PPY fees of around SBD 1,000 per child per year, and families unable to meet them either kept children out of early learning or enrolled them directly into Year 1, from where they were later moved back into PPY. This is one driver of an overage enrolment rate of 46.3 per cent across the evaluated provinces, with children aged five to twelve sharing the same classroom, which the evaluation found to be materially damaging the programme’s internal efficiency.

The principal risk in a sector-wide free education reform is that early learning is treated as residual and left out by the larger and more politically visible costs of primary, secondary and tertiary provision. MEHRD wants to ensure that early learning is explicitly costed, financed and protected within the free education roll-out, so that every child in Solomon Islands secures at least one year of quality early learning before entering primary school, and so that a credible, costed pathway towards progressively free ECE for 3–4-year-olds and PPY for 5-year olds is placed on the table.

The early learning consultancy is also the vehicle for answering, with Solomon Islands numbers, the financing questions the 2023 PPY evaluation raised but could not resolve: what long-term financial commitment is required for effective reform, expansion and strengthening of PPY and ECE; how limited resources can be allocated more efficiently; what steps would secure success when more resources become available; and what sustainable funding mechanisms for PPY and ECE would look like in practice.

Under the leadership of MEHRD, and in collaboration with DFAT and other members of the Education Development Partners Coordination Group (EDPCG), the international consultant will produce a rigorous, Solomon Islands-specific economic analysis of the cost of providing free PPY and ECE to all children through existing programmes; a set of costed scenarios with five-year projections, financing options and explicit trade-off analysis; and a policy paper that serves both as an information document and as an advocacy instrument for increasing public financing for free early learning. The analysis is specifically expected to produce analysis and recommendations to support the inclusion of PPY in the Free Education roll-out for the first phase and ECE with subsequent phases, with proactive financing options (if determined feasible) and/or within a set timeframe if additional preparation of that system is considered to be required. It is deliberately timed to inform MEHRD’s review of the free education costing, the 2027 national budget cycle, and the development of the National Education Action Plan (NEAP) 2027–2031, for which national consultations were launched in September 2026.

If you would like to know more about this consultancy, please review the complete Terms of Reference here: Early Learning Consultant.pdf

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

Minimum requirements: |(Qualifications/Experience/ Knowledge/Expertise/Skills)

• Education: Masters Education, economics, public policy, or a closely related social science discipline.
• Work Experience:
  • Minimum of seven years of progressively responsible professional experience in education economics, education financing, public financial management or the costing of social sector programmes, including experience in developing country contexts.
  • Demonstrated experience leading at least one education sector costing, simulation or public expenditure analysis that was used by a government to inform budget or policy decisions; more than one is an advantage. Applicants must submit one sample of comparable written work.
  • Experience in early childhood or pre-primary education financing or costing, and in working directly with ministries of education and/or finance on budget analysis, unit-cost analysis and fiscal space assessment.
  • Experience in Pacific Island Countries, small island developing states or comparable small-population and geographically dispersed contexts, and experience with UNICEF, the Global Partnership for Education, the World Bank or bilateral partners on education sector planning and financing, are advantages rather than requirements.
• Language Requirements: Fluency in wriƩen and spoken English is required.
• Knowledge/Expertise/Skills:
  • Ability to build transparent, well-documented and usereditable costing and simulation models, to run sensitivity analysis, and to hand the model over and train government counterparts in its use.
  • Strong command of education sector budget analysis, including the ability to work directly from national budget books, appropriation acts and recurrent and development estimates, and to derive credible unit costs from administrative and EMIS data.
  • Proven ability to translate technical economic analysis into concise policy and advocacy products for senior government decision-makers, with excellent analytical writing, facilitation and presentation skills in English.
  • Political and cultural sensitivity, the judgement required to work credibly within a contested national reform debate, and the ability to build consensus with government counterparts and development partners.
• Desirable:
  • Familiarity with the Solomon Islands education system, including the Education Act 2023 and its subordinate instruments, the Education Funding Code, the National Education Action Plan, the Primary Preparation Year programme and the 2023 country-led evaluation of that programme.
  • Familiarity with Pacific regional education and ECD architecture, including PacREF, the Pacific Regional Council for Early Childhood Development and the Pasifika Call to Action on ECD.
  • Experience with GPE partnership compacts and System Transformation Grants.
  • A publication or public analytical record on early childhood education financing or education public finance.
  • nowledge of the global and regional evidence base on early childhood education financing, including SDG target 4.2, the Tashkent Declaration commitments and the benchmark of at least 10 per cent of education expenditure for pre-primary education.
  • Familiarity with UNICEF’s ethical standards in research, evaluation, data collection and analysis.

For every Child, you demonstrate...

UNICEF’s Core Values of Care, Respect, Integrity, Trust and Accountability and Sustainability (CRITAS) underpin everything we do and how we do it. Get acquainted with Our Values Charter: UNICEF Values

UNICEF promotes and advocates for the protection of the rights of every child, everywhere, in everything it does and is mandated to support the realization of the rights of every child, including those most disadvantaged, and our global workforce must reflect the diversity of those children. The UNICEF family is committed to include everyone, irrespective of their race/ethnicity, disability, gender identity, sexual orientation, religion, nationality, socio-economic background, minority, or any other status.

UNICEF encourages applications from all qualified candidates, regardless of gender, nationality, religious or ethnic backgrounds, and from people with disabilities, including neurodivergence. We offer reasonable accommodation for persons with disabilities. throughout the recruitment process. If you require any accommodation, please submit your request through the accessibility email button on the UNICEF Careers webpage Accessibility | UNICEF. Should you be shortlisted, please get in touch with the recruiter directly to share further details, enabling us to make the necessary arrangements in advance.

UNICEF does not hire candidates who are married to children (persons under 18). UNICEF has a zero-tolerance policy on conduct that is incompatible with the aims and objectives of the United Nations and UNICEF, including sexual exploitation and abuse, sexual harassment, abuse of authority and discrimination based on gender, nationality, age, race, sexual orientation, religious or ethnic background or disabilities. UNICEF is committed to promote the protection and safeguarding of all children. All selected candidates will, therefore, undergo rigorous reference and background checks, and will be expected to adhere to these standards and principles. Background checks will include the verification of academic credential(s) and employment history. Selected candidates may be required to provide additional information to conduct a background check, and selected candidates with disabilities may be requested to submit supporting documentation in relation to their disability confidentially.

Qualified candidates are invited to submit the following documents via the online recruitment portal, TMS (Talent Management System):

• An up-to-date TMS profile and curriculum vitae (CV)
• Cover letter
• A separate financial proposal (only acceptable in the format of the linked template) Financial proposal Early Learning Consultant.docx