Our team

Estelle spent 18 years teaching in an inner-city comprehensive school before being elected as the Member of Parliament for Birmingham Yardley, in 1992. She served as a schools minister in the Labour government of 1997-2001 and as Secretary of State for Education and Skills between 2001-2002. She also served as Minister for Arts from 2003-2005. Since leaving the House of Commons in 2005 Baroness Morris has held a number of posts in education, including Pro Vice-Chancellor at the University of Sunderland, Chair of the Children’s Workforce Development Council and Chair of the Institute of Effective Education. She is currently Chair of the Birmingham Education Partnership and is a member of the House of Lords.

Stuart is Honorary Professor of University College London in the Institute of Education - Curriculum, Pedagogy & Assessment. He has worked for international awarding organisations for over 20 years and is particularly interested in demonstrating how educational, psychological, and vocational tests seek to meet the demands of validity, reliability, and fairness.

Stuart Shaw began his career as a scientist/engineer, and holds a joint honours degree in Physics and Mathematics, a diploma in Applied Physics, Statistics and Electronics and a research degree in Metallurgy. His early experience, gained with an international plc (British Gas Research), covered the range of engineering specialisms. He was an experienced presenter as a scientist, lecturing for the School of Fuel Management and promoting the work of British Gas to customers from the manufacturing sector. Following a change in career path, Stuart entered the world of Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL), gaining a certificate and diploma in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) and a Master’s in Teaching English for Specific Purposes (TESP). He has several years’ experience as an English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teacher and as a Director of Studies within secondary and tertiary education (both in the UK and abroad).

Stuart joined Cambridge Assessment (formerly University of Cambridge Local Examinations Syndicate, UCLES) in January 2001. He was a Senior Validation Officer with Cambridge ESOL for over six years with specific skill responsibilities for assessing second language writing. From 2007 to 2021, he was Head of Research at Cambridge Assessment International Education.

Stuart has a wide range of publications in English second language assessment and educational/psychological research journals (around 150 publications). His assessment books include:

• Examining Writing: Research and practice in assessing second language writing (Shaw & Weir, 2007)
• The IELTS Writing Assessment Revision Project: towards a revised rating scale (Shaw & Falvey, 2008)
• Validity in Educational and Psychological Assessment (Newton & Shaw, 2014)
• Language Rich: Insights from Multilingual Schools (Shaw, Imam & Hughes, 2015)
• Is Assessment Fair? (Isabel Nisbet & Stuart Shaw, 2020).

Stuart is currently working on a book with Isabel Nisbet (to be published by Routledge in 2024) entitled: Educational Assessment in a Changing World: Lessons Learned and the Path Ahead. He is also about to embark on another major writing project with research colleagues from Trinity College Dublin (Ireland) which takes as its focus externally moderated school-based assessment from an international perspective.

Stuart is Chair of the Board of Trustees, Chartered Institute of Educational Assessors (CIEA) and a Fellow of the Institute. He is also a Fellow of the Association for Educational Assessment in Europe (AEA-Europe). Stuart is an elected member of the Council of AEA-Europe and is Chair of its Scientific Programme Committee. He is also an elected member of the Board of Trustees of the International Association for Educational Assessment (IAEA) and Chair of the IAEA Communications Committee.

Stuart has contributed to international debates on validity and fairness (see, for example, Special Issue of Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy & Practice, 2016) and more recently at The British Educational Research Association (BERA) Presidential Roundtable (2022). Stuart regularly presents at British, European and International conferences and has given keynote presentations.

Mick’s teaching career extended over eighteen years including work in secondary, sixth form and Further Education institutions as well as work in Higher Education as an external examiner.  He has worked as a local education authority advisory teacher and as a general adviser working with primary and secondary schools. Throughout his career, he has been closely associated with the assessment system holding the posts of chief examiner, senior moderator and external university examiner.

Mick joined the National Curriculum Council in 1992 and worked on several iterations of the National Curriculum and non-statutory guidance. Following his position as head of the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority’s (QCA) regulatory monitoring programme of general and vocational awarding bodies, Mick played a key role in the National Assessment Authority’s (NAA) modernisation programme leading on support for examiner recruitment and recognition of their professional status through the formation of what is now the Chartered Institute of Educational Assessors (CIEA). Following delivery failures of national curriculum tests in 2008, Mick took on the post of Acting Managing Director of the NAA and is credited with re-building the national curriculum assessment system.

A former acting Director of QCA and Executive Director of Education at the Qualifications and Curriculum Development Agency (QCDA), Mick was accountable for National Curriculum assessments, supporting the delivery of general qualifications and oversight of the National Curriculum. He was an adviser to the DfE Expert Group on Assessment in 2009 and supported the National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT) Commission on Assessment in 2014. Mick was a member of the DfE Independent Teacher Workload Review Group and an adviser to the DfE Workload Team.  He has acted as an Associate Director of the AQA awarding body, an Adviser to the Welsh and Pakistan Governments, PwC and FrogEducation. Mick is Vice-Chair of the Chartered Institute of Educational Assessors (CIEA), Chair of the Evidence Based Education (EBE) Advisory Board, and Chairs the Assessment Committee of the Institute of Directors (IoD). He was a member of the Joint Council for Qualifications’ (JCQ) Commission on Malpractice in Public Examinations and has advised the DfE Educational Technology and Data Policy Teams. Mick is a lay member of the Health Research Authority Ethics Committee and lay member of the University of Leeds Business, Environment and Social Sciences Research Ethic Committee. He has chaired and presented to numerous conferences and lead training on education and assessment to a range of organisations in the UK and aboard.

Examples of recent projects include:

1. Designing the NAHT Curriculum and Assessment Framework. (2015)
2. Research and advisory support for the DfE Teacher Workload groups on Marking and Data (2015 and on-going).
3. Providing a framework for the evaluation of schools’ curriculum and assessment systems across the world for Opportunity International Pathways to Excellence (2017);
4. Development of an Assessment Policy and Curriculum Framework for the Punjab – sponsored by DFID (2017);
5. Member of the Independent Commission on Examination Malpractice (2019).

Mick holds a PhD in educational assessment from the University of Leeds and degrees at Masters and Bachelor levels. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, a Founding Fellow of the Chartered College of Teaching and a Fellow of the CIEA. He is passionate about education and aligning the aims of national high volume assessment and testing systems with the aims and realities of everyday teaching and learning in schools, colleges and the workplace to benefit society and to support each individual learner to reach their true potential.

Janet Crook (MA, BA, PGCE) has worked in education since 1994 as a teacher of English, moving into leadership and management in FE and Sixth Form Colleges. The main focus of her roles in management has been quality assurance and improvement. Janet moved into local authority in 2009, working in Children, Young People and Learning before taking on a role as the CEO of an education charity for children and young people with learning difficulties and disabilities. Janet’s work in assessment began in assessment delivery in 1998 as an examiner, and since then she has been examiner, moderator, Senior Examiner, Principal Examiner, Chief Examiner and Chair of Examiners on a range of English qualifications including GCSE, International GCSE, A Level and Functional Skills. These roles encompass writing, revising, scrutinising and subject checking assessment materials, writing support materials for teachers and providers, producing video support materials and working in collaboration on writing textbooks. This work helped move her into the sphere of assessment design and production, working as part of the team redeveloping the GCSE as part of the 2015 reforms and beyond. Janet is currently the Chief Examiner for two high-stakes English qualifications with a large awarding organisation, and since taking the leap into working full-time in assessment in 2017 she has taken on assessment design and production activities in technical qualifications for two awarding organisations. Janet has been a Fellow of the CIEA for over 10 years and is a self-confessed ‘assessment geek’ with particular interests being quality assurance, accessibility and different modes of assessment, having worked to support the development of fully online GCSE-level English assessments.

Dr Rebecca Conway is Director of Research and Innovation at NCFE, one of the largest technical and vocational awarding organisations in the UK and an educational charity.

Rebecca moved into the awarding sector in 2012 after starting her career in Higher Education as a PhD researcher and tutor. She has held technical assessment roles with several organisations, including Cambridge University Press & Assessment where she worked in an innovative and fast-paced international education development team. She moved from there to the Federation of Awarding Bodies where she led on policy and strategy during the Covid pandemic. Rebecca joined NCFE in August 2024 and has overall responsibility for the organisation’s research, insight, innovation and social investment work.

Rebecca has a longstanding interest in practitioner research and professional development in assessment and awarding. She has trained hundreds of assessment and education professionals on CPD and postgraduate courses for Cambridge Assessment Network, international schools, universities and awarding organisations. She currently supports professional learners with practitioner research projects through her role as a part-time Academic Supervisor on the University of Cambridge’s postgraduate assessment programme.

She is a member of AEA-Europe and a Trustee of Laser Learning Awards.

Isabel’s career has been mainly in government and regulation. After undergraduate and postgraduate study (mainly of philosophy), she entered the civil service and worked in government departments in Scotland and England, including posts in close contact with Ministers and a spell as Deputy Ombudsman adjudicating complaints about health care.

Isabel held Director posts at the General Medical Council, overseeing Fitness to Practise procedures and undergraduate medical education. She led the establishment of the Postgraduate Medical Education and Training Board, from where she moved to the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority to lead its Directorate responsible for regulating qualifications and national curriculum assessments. In 2007 she led the work to set up a new statutory regulator of qualifications in England, subsequently named as Ofqual, and she became its first CEO. From 2011-2014 she worked for Cambridge International Examinations, based in Singapore.

Isabel is now active in consultancy and non-executive roles and has continued her academic interest in educational assessment and in the philosophy of education. She was the co-author, with Stuart Shaw, of “Is Assessment Fair?”, published by SAGE in 2020 and “Educational Assessment in a Changing World: Lessons Learned and the Path Ahead”, published by Routledge in 2024. From 2021-2023 she served on a panel appointed to review all aspects of education in Northern Ireland. Their report was published in December 2023.

Isabel has served on the Boards of Governors of four universities in England and currently is Vice-Chair of Governors of the University of Bedfordshire. She served for 6 years on the Board of Qualifications Wales and is an external member of the Committee overseeing the launch of Qualifications Scotland. She is a member of the National Statistician’s Data Ethics Committee.

Tracey has managed a beauty business as a sole proprietor and worked in the Government Sector for over 15 years, mainly within UK Courts. She has over 13 years experience in business leadership, management, and operational delivery.

Tracey’s passion is mentoring, and she brings expertise in mentoring from across different industries such as the Government Sector, Education and Third Sector and has incorporated mentoring within every facet of her working career.

Tracey has recently engaged in education consultancy on pedagogy, curriculum, module design, student support, assessment and delivery of pedagogy and assessments, quality assurance of education.

She is dedicated to SoTL through recently working recently with the Open University’s SCiLAB (Scholarship Centre for online legal and business education) and working with Open University academics on CoCrea8LT, a research project looking at co-creation of technology courses.

Tracey is a Chartered Member of CIPD, Associate member of the Chartered Institute of Educational Assessors, Member of the UK Register of Career Development Professionals and sits on the Board of Governors for an Education Trust, Corporation Board for a College and has held Chair for an EDI Committee as well as Chair for Board of Directors of an educational consultancy.

A former senior compliance practitioner to director level, Sharon is well qualified with extensive practical experience in Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC) related matters. Passionate about developing individuals to support personal growth and professional practice within industry, over the past three decades she has been actively involved in a number of initiatives in this field. This included the early days development of a new professional body (the International Compliance Association) with roles spanning Global Head of Education & Training, Development Director and, more recently as part of her growing portfolio of roles, Chief Examiner (GRC).

Acting as a trusted Board/Committee Advisor and as an Assessor and Trainer, Sharon has supported organisations and individuals on a range of GRC related projects: ongoing work as an assessor of individuals (from new entrants through to senior leaders) including Apprentice assessment; as Module Director for the Financial Services Compliance Elective of the Chartered Banker MBA programme (CBMBA) at Bangor Business School; as Editor/Member of the Editorial Board of the Journal of Business Compliance; as author of, and contributor to, professional education texts and journals.

She previously served as Chair of the Compliance Institute in the UK, where she was a member of its Professional Education Board. Sharon holds an MSc in Financial Regulation & Compliance Management, is a Fellow of the ICA and a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Educational Assessors.

Kathy has spent 45 years working in and for public education. She began her teaching career in Inner city Manchester and went on to have three secondary headships. The last headship was as the Principal in one of the first of a new type of schools introduced in the early 2000s. This was a city academy in Moss Side Manchester.

Lord Andrew Adonis in his book ‘Education, Education, Education’ described its predecessor school as one of the most gang infested comprehensive schools in the country. Just over five years later it was judged to be outstanding. After this she worked as Deputy CEO in one of the largest MATs in the country.

She has also been a Director of Education in two LEAs, worked as a senior adviser in the DFE, been a visiting professor at Salford Business School and worked as an interim CEO.

She became a Dame in the 2014 New Years honours list. Her book ‘Building an academy school in the UK: With Principal” (Cambridge Scholastic’ pubs) was published in June 2022.

She is married with two sons and continues to work independently in education in the maintained and independent sector.

A Fellow and Chartered Educational Assessor of the CIEA since 2013, David has worked for a professional body, the International Compliance Association. He provided expertise and direction in assessments and associated governance, management systems and compliance for over a decade. He established an End-Point Assessment organisation obtaining recognition for delivery of five Standards by ESFA, has worked closely with standards developers in Trailblazer groups to produce standards and their assessment plans that received approval from IfATE.

Working with programme designers, David successfully took postgraduate diploma programmes through validation processes with University of Manchester, Alliance Manchester Business School and with the University of Law. David designed and developed quality management systems, which includes a peer-reviewed development tool for professional and vocational qualifications from level 3 to level 7, for assessment operations and the risk governance model that supports its function.

David recently started Agora Business Consulting to support education, training and apprenticeships providers in the spectrum of their diverse assessment and governance activities.

Ian has been a Fellow the Chartered Institute of Educational Assessors for several years. He taught Economics, Business, ICT, and maths or 35 years in a range of UK education environments including some approved by HM and in deprived areas in the North East. He finished full-time teaching at Whickham School, Gateshead.

As a Chief Examiner with Pearson and a Principal Standards Verifier also with Pearson, Ian has been involved in setting, marking, and moderating a range of subject both academic
and vocational. With NCFE Ian has been Chair of Functional Skills (maths). He has held a Principal Examiner role (English) with NOCN.

More recently Ian has been involved with exam inspections. He conducts extensive IQA and EQA work with a variety of centres.

Over the years Ian has written a GCSE Business textbook and various textbooks for BTEC courses.

Quality Assurance is at the heart of everything in which Ian believes and promotes.

Joe Toko brings nearly two decades of diverse educational experience across primary, secondary, further, and higher education. He currently serves as Deputy Programme Lead on the MA in Education programme at the University of Hertfordshire, where he leads modules such as Leadership in Education and Introduction to Educational Research. He also contributes to the BA in Education programme, delivering innovative content on Education in a Digital Age and Professional Identity.

Joe has a proven track record in assessment and redesigning curriculum content to align with current research and industry standards. By integrating cutting-edge technology and fostering interactive learning environments, he has consistently enhanced student engagement and accessibility.

Joe has held leadership roles, including Assistant Principal at South Quay College, where he contributed to securing an Outstanding Ofsted rating, and strategic roles at Serenity Education as the director for Learning and Teaching. His expertise in designing assessment frameworks and delivering high-quality training programmes aligns closely with the Chartered Institute of Educational Assessors’ mission to uphold professional standards in educational assessment.

Joe’s Doctorate in Education reflects his commitment to innovative approaches in assessment and curriculum design, making him a strong advocate for advancing excellence in the field.

Miranda began her career in local government where she worked in both the legal and print department as a secretary then type setter. She then moved into office based work where she became an Account Executive, and then progressed into production. Alongside this, she joined the Royal Navy Reserve in 1991 and is now a Petty Officer in the warfare seaman specialisation of which she was mobilised in 2011 for 8 months.

Miranda went into bookkeeping in 2002 and is now a member of The Institute of Certified Bookkeepers. She joined the CIEA in May as the organisation’s Accounts Administrator. Her methodical and investigative approach makes her a valuable and hardworking member of the team.

The CIEA Administration team is based at the University of Hertfordshire, they are a close-knit team who work together on a wide range of administration tasks covering membership, training, finance and marketing.

Dr Newman Burdett is an educational assessment expert and has previously been Head of Ministry Partnerships working on state education and examination reform projects for Cambridge Assessment and also the Head of Centre for International Comparisons at the National Foundational for Educational Research in the UK, responsible for PISA and TIMSS in the UK. He is currently working as a freelance assessment expert.

He is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Educational Assessors and a Fellow of the AEA-Europe. He sits on the Aga Khan University Examination Board Executive Committee and DFID’s Intellectual Leadership Team for Research Informed Systems of Education.

Jo has over 25 years of experience as a teacher, having held a range of roles including Assessment Leader and Acting Head Teacher. After several years as a Primary Deputy Head Teacher, Jo completed an M.Ed in Primary School Improvement and became an ICT Curriculum Development Adviser for Essex LEA focussing on ICT assessment.

Following a family focussed career break and a move to Warwickshire, Jo returned to the classroom teaching both KS1 and KS2 before moving into a management role once more as SENDCO and Acting Deputy Headteacher.

Jo currently works as a trainer and consultant specialising in Primary maths, reading intervention and all aspects of Primary and Secondary school governance, including use of assessment data. She is also a Primary School Governor herself.

Jo has extensive experience of maths assessment and marking, having lead teams of markers for many years. She likes to keep her teaching skills up to date, most recently having completed a fixed term teaching contract as a part time Secondary maths teacher supporting lower sets up to GCSE level.

Helen is a freelance Education Consultant who has worked as a trainer, resources writer, senior examiner, senior moderator, scrutineer, lead assessment writer and principal examiner for a leading exam board. She has also worked for PiXL as a presenter and resources writer. Helen currently works for the Education and Training Foundation as a trainer and as a project mentor on the Outstanding Teaching and Learning Assessment programme (OTLA). In addition to this, she is a Chair of Governors for a secondary school in Warwickshire, a consultant for an Area Outreach Programme and a freelance secondary and FE English trainer. Lastly, Helen also works as a quality checker for several large online resources companies and is on Ofqual's list of subject experts. Helen is accredited as an Educational Assessor.

Hannah is Deputy Head Teacher at Gaddesden Row J.M.I School in Hertfordshire, with specific responsibility for curriculum. She was previously Assessment Lead at Birchwood Avenue Primary School. It was during this role she qualified as a Chartered Educational Assessor.

She has worked in the primary sector since 2010 and is an experienced teacher across the primary age range.