Principal Project Officer

**Ongoing Full-Time**:

- **Location: Parramatta**

**About the Department of Education***

The Department of Education is the largest provider of public education in Australia with responsibility for delivering high-quality public education to two-thirds of the NSW student population.

For more information about the Department of Education, please visit NSW Department of Education

This role sits in our School Performance division which leads and directs the operations of more than 2200 NSW public schools to maximise the academic achievements of all students and create a culture of success, learning and a desire to achieve, underpinned by innovative, adaptive and supportive strategies that also supports the quality of teaching and educational leadership at the school level. The division is responsible for the achievement of excellence in educational leadership, professional practice and school performance in preschools, infants, primary, secondary, central and community schools, specialist and comprehensive schools, specific purpose schools, intensive English and environmental education centres. The overarching goal of the School Performance division is to achieve the best possible outcomes for the students in our public schools from preschool to year 12.

**About the role**

The Principal Project Officer manages the development, delivery and monitoring of business processes to support the development and operation of the School Planning and Reporting Online (SPaRO) software. The role is responsible for information management, building evidence-based tools for evaluation and utilising technologies to maximise efficiencies and effectiveness that support school improvement and student learning outcomes.

For further information please view the **role description**

**Essential requirements of the role**
- Qualifications in a relevant discipline and/or demonstrated equivalent knowledge, skills, and experience.
- Hold a valid clearance to work with children (Working with Children Check) for paid employment.

**Key knowledge and experience**
- Knowledge of and commitment to implementing the Department’s Aboriginal Education Policy and upholding the Department’s Partnership Agreement with the NSW AECG and to ensure quality outcomes for Aboriginal people.

**About you**

**We are seeking someone who can;**
- Provide high level, evidence-based advice, and information to inform both internal and external stakeholders and support policy directions to ensure key targeted project outcomes are delivered in line with established plans, timeframes and within budget to ensure organisational and business objectives are achieved.
- Contribute to stakeholder relationships through effective liaison, communication and negotiation to ensure key stakeholders and external service providers (in particular Sentral) are engaged throughout the project and support services are in place, including monitoring supplier performance and outcomes, to enable quality end to end delivery of services to support school leaders.
- Develop operating models and processes, maintain service level agreements where required, identify emerging issues and formulate recommendations to mitigate risk that facilitate successful outcomes and support delivery, to ensure that the systems continue to align with essential high priorities for stakeholders.
- Manage priorities, maintain records, meet reporting requirements and provide advice on prioritisation, risks and issues, to ensure project outcomes are achieved on time, on budget, to quality standards and in line with customer and business needs.
- Utilise business unit insights, and systems such as SPaRO and Power BI to identify, extract and present data to provide evidence-based advice on data analysis to solve complex problems, inform decision-making and contribute to the development of systems and processes to support the Strategic School Improvement unit and School Excellence policy model.
- Liaise and work collaboratively with team members, other business units across the Department and key stakeholders to increase efficiencies, implement systemic change, and disseminate relevant information to enable effective delivery of educational services supporting principals, Directors, Educational Leadership, corporate officers and schools.
- Provide regular updates to the supervisor regarding progress and achievement of the role’s agreed business and reporting targets. The supervisor needs to be alerted to potential or emerging business-critical matters that could adversely impact program implementation and/or service delivery.
- Prepare insights, reports, status updates, documentation, briefs and correspondence to ensure department executives, senior stakeholders and/or ministerial requests are responded to and key stakeholders are updated and engaged throughout the project.and support policy directions to ensure key targeted project outcomes are delivered in line with established plans, timeframes and w