An educational consultant provides valuable problem-solving strategies to students, parents, teachers, educational organizations, collective academic governing bodies and school administrators. Whatever the particular nature of the problem may be, an educational consultant is trained to assess the severity of some of the most common and problematic issues suffered by all different individuals in the educational field and develop actionable, statistically-supported solutions.
There isn’t a single, specific variety of problem that an educational consultant typically addresses more than others, though generally speaking, their services will be most applicable to issues that have a pronounced impact on either the effectiveness of an educational program or an individual student’s ability to complete an educational program properly.
Under most circumstances, an educational consultant is an independent contractor that educational institutions will reach out to in order to establish a freelance contract.
Salary
The median annual salary for an educational consultant is about $95,840, with a standard range that spans between $85,191 and $106,489. Depending on the experience of the educational consultant and the nature of the issues that they are called in to resolve, their compensation may vary greatly.
Beginning Salary
The average starting salary of an educational consultant is about $75,000. Depending on the location that the consultant begins their practice in and the nature of the initial issues that they address, their beginning salary may potentially be higher than the projection for the typical entry-level amount. As educational consultant compensation is highly contingent upon the factors of projects that they are commissioned for, their starting salary can be just as variable as the median salary.
Key Responsibilities
The potential services that an educational consultant can provide are as diverse as the variety of issues that serve as cause for their intervention. An educational consultants can be commissioned to assist a school in its goal to establish more effective administrative policies just as commonly as they are called on to provide support for a parent whose child refuses to listen to math lessons.
Because the scales of different assignments that an educational consultant can take on is so variable, they will generally distinguish themselves by virtue of what kind of assignments they have developed a reputation for being the most proficient in.
Whatever the nature of the assignment that an educational consultant is called in to resolve, their key responsibilities will generally be to help their clients identify the most significant underlying root causes of their problems and work towards developing the most efficient and reasonable solutions.
Educational consultants need to be observant, compassionate and levelheaded. The ideal educational consultant is capable of determining the best ways that their client can implement strategies that both play to their strengths and are based in statistically valid success rates.
Necessary Skills
Naturally, an educational consultant needs to be highly skilled in effective communication and active listening. Rather than attempting to forcefully convince their clients of the presence of an underlying problem by speaking over them, an effective educational consultant will be proficient at helping their clients come to the same conclusion that they have by making sharp observations and asking leading questions about those observations that give the client a cognitive map to follow to the most reasonable answer.
The most effective educational consultants will usually have a combination of both high abstract thinking skills, curiosity and a sharp sense of attention to detail; with these three qualities, educational consultants can be highly effective at noticing innovative solutions to issues by looking in places that most would not have immediately considered.
In addition to being effective planners, educational consultants will also need to be effective at developing contingency plans in case certain projects don’t go quite as planned. Educational consultants cannot guarantee that the issues they address will be perfectly resolved every time that they are called upon, but at the same time, their service should still help a client by providing valuable insight into a problem that can be used simply to have a more enlightened understanding about it. Even if the issue isn’t immediately resolved, the educational consultant’s clients can be left with a better frame of mind to consider alternative ways solutions that could prove to be effective in the future.
Degree And Education Requirements
Because a great deal of the educational consultant’s observations will need to be validated and reported with statistical figures, it is highly valuable for them to have formal education in statistics and research methods. The quality of an educational consultant’s data analyses will be directly correlated with the degree of confidence that their determinations of the client’s situation can be made with. Some of the metrics that educational consultants may statistically analyze are performance metrics for the institution and the grade-point averages of the students.
The minimum required education to become an educational consultant is a bachelor’s degree, but for some employers who need an educational consultant to address more complex and large-scale projects, a graduate certificate may be necessitated.
For an educational consultant, the process of earning a graduate certificate consists of a 200 hour program that must be completed within one calendar year; in some circumstances, however, completion within five years is acceptable.
Throughout the course of their training, educational consultants will be instructed in the use of technical solutions for accurate data analysis and well-organized financial planning methods.
Pros and Cons
The opportunities for an educational consultant to facilitate more success in students and efficiency in school systems can be a highly fulfilling role for those who have a great degree of passion for educational reform. By gaining experience in resolving a wide variety of problems that challenge students and school administrators alike, educational consultants can become well-rounded experts in the art of addressing all varieties of problems that hold education systems back from their full potential.
While the field offers educational consultants a very generous amount of opportunities to contribute immense value and discover very enlightening statistics, the responsibilities of the role can be just as overwhelming as they are fulfilling.
Educational consultants can sometimes be called into situations where not only is there a fundamental administrative problem, but also a communication issue that exacerbates it. Educational consultants will not always be able to resolve the personal issues that obstruct the resolution of purely administrative problem, and in these cases, it is important for an educational consultant to have a way of gracefully conceding that they may not be able to deliver an immediate solution.
Getting Started
The best way to begin the path toward becoming an educational consultant is to start researching what some of the most prominent challenges currently facing the education system are. Through independent research of credible sources, you will be able to gain a well-founded perspective on what some of the most common trends are regarding the challenges that parents and school administrators are most likely to call upon educational consultants for.
If you have a bachelor’s degree, then there are a number of schools that offer certificate programs both in physical classrooms and through online modules. In addition to statistical comprehension, you would be well-advised to invest time in learning how to sharpen your financial management skills and your soft skills relevant to counseling.
Future Outlook
The Bureau Of Labor Statistics projected that educational consultants were likely to have a job outlook of about 9 percent between 2014 and 2024. A greater degree of public interest in more innovative and technologically supported teaching methods could be related to a higher demand for consultants who are trained in innovative ways to address challenges that may be related to these new teaching solutions.
Summary
Educational consultants are not only professional masters of consultancy, but also critical observation, strategic planning and statistical analysis to validate the conclusions that they are able to draw from their observations. The role of an educational consultant requires a combination of both graceful soft skills and well-honed technical skills.
As the public’s level of understanding about how educational systems can be improved through statistical analysis has grown greater, the value of educational consultants has become all the more apparent. In difficult and challenging situations that seem inexplicable, educational consultants read the data to share the story it tells.
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