Opportunity Areas Analysis Team SEO

**Details**:
**Reference number**:
191013

**Salary**:
£41,989

**Grade**:
Senior Executive Officer

Senior Research Officer, Senior Economic Assistant, Senior Scientific Officer, Senior Statistical Officer

**Contract type**:
Permanent

**Business area**:
DFE - Operations Group - Opportunity Areas Analysis Team

**Type of role**:
Analytical

Economist
Operational Research
Social Research
Statistics

**Working pattern**:
Flexible working, Full-time, Job share, Part-time

**Number of posts**:
1

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Location

Bristol BS1 6EH, Coventry CV1 2WT, Darlington DL1 5QE, Leeds LS2 8ER, Manchester M1 2WD, Nottingham NG1 6HJ ,Sheffield S1 2FJ

About the job

**Summary**:
Opportunity Areas (OA) is a multi-million-pound programme of place-based interventions in 12 areas of educational disadvantage: West Somerset, Norwich, Blackpool, North Yorkshire coast, Derby, Oldham, Bradford, Doncaster, Fenland and East Cambridgeshire, Hastings, Ipswich and Stoke-on-Trent. The programme operates across all education phases, focusing on improving outcomes for all pupils, particularly those who face educational disadvantage.

The Opportunity Areas are supported by a high-performing, flexible and supportive team of Opportunity Areas analysts - a mix of statisticians, economists, and social researchers. We are based in the Central Analysis Unit (CAU) in DfE, and we are responsible for supporting the OA delivery and policy teams with their analytical needs. The work of the team is diverse, ranging from analytical support in identifying evidence-based interventions for delivery in the OAs, monitoring and reporting on delivery targets, analytical briefing for ministers and senior stakeholders, business cases for new or novel areas of OA activity, and impact evaluation/ value-for-money analysis of programme investment to date.

The programme is now in its fifth year (academic year 2021/22) and this is a particularly exciting time to get involved. The process has already begun for the OAs to transition and integrate into the UK Government’s high-priority Levelling Up agenda. We are boosting our capacity in the analytical team so that we can continue to champion the role of evidence in programme design, delivery, and evaluation.

**Job description**:
You will work closely with OA colleagues to understand their analysis/ evidence needs. You will use your knowledge, experience, judgement, confidence, and communication skills to help shape the ask and decide the best way to deliver on it. We want you to build and maintain close links with OA teams so that you're able to anticipate future needs. Working with OA colleagues, you will build credibility and gain their confidence as an analytical expert, acting with confidence and integrity, offering constructive challenge, and working collaboratively to find solutions to analytical needs.

The OA programme is cross-cutting in nature and, as such, makes use of data from across the Department. You will become familiar with published data related to the OAs, and you will make use of and improve existing OA data tools. DfE is a data-rich environment, and you will become proficient in accessing, manipulating, and analysing large administrative datasets such as the National Pupil Database. Familiarity with R would be an advantage but is not essential as we have an award-winning in-house training programme.

You must be an existing member of one of the analytical professions: Government Social Research (GSR), Government Operational Research (GORS), Government Economic Service (GES), Government Statistical Group (GSG).

**Responsibilities**:

- Getting to grips with the history, aims and component parts of the OA programme.
- Feeding into the developing policy environment as the OAs transition to play a key role in the UK Government’s Levelling Up agenda.
- Building productive relationships with policy and delivery colleagues.
- Developing familiarity with and, eventually, expertise in the DfE data landscape as it pertains to the Opportunity Areas.
- Working with OA delivery teams to understand and shape their analytical needs.
- Triaging analytical requests from OA teams - working with them to clarify asks, determine relative priority, decide how best to meet needs, and provide constructive challenge around the ask where appropriate.
- Leading on delivering analytical commissions from OAs, either alone or by task-managing junior analysts to deliver.
- Communicating analytical findings accessibly to colleagues and stakeholders who are not themselves analysts.
- Building relationships across the DfE analytical community and wider stakeholders (e.g. EEF) whose expertise and evidence we draw on.
- Championing the role of analysis and evidence in all interactions with OA stakeholders.

**Person Specification**

**Essential Criteria**

We are looking for an experienced analyst who can bring the following skills and experience to the team:

- Experience and skill in using a range of analytical software in th