International Ministerial Advisory Panel

The appointed Panel will provide professional advice on the development and implementation of relevant education policies.  This will include by providing insight on national and international research and best practices or emerging evidence in education policy in high performing education systems. 

The terms of reference for the review are below:-

• International Ministerial Advisory Panel on Curriculum and Assessment in Northern Ireland - Terms of Reference

Panel members

Appointed members of the International Ministerial Advisory Panel are:

Hardip Begol CBE is the former Director for Assessment, Curriculum, Qualifications and Accountability from 2012 to 2014 at the Department for Education (DfE). He was responsible for major reforms to the National Curriculum in England, GCSEs and A-levels, and school accountability.

Dr Jennifer Buckingham OAM is Executive Director of the Centre for Education Statistics and Evaluation (CESE) in the New South Wales Department of Education. Prior to that, she was Director of Strategy and Senior Research Fellow at MultiLit, and Senior Research Fellow at The Centre for Independent Studies. She is co-editor and co-author of the textbook Effective Instruction in Reading and Spelling (MRU Press, 2023) and An investigation of literacy instruction and policy in the United Kingdom and Ireland (Churchill Trust Australia, 2024). 

Daisy Christodoulou is Director of Education at No More Marking, a provider of online comparative judgement assessments. She works closely with schools in the UK, Australia and USA on developing new approaches to assessment, and on applications of artificial intelligence in the classroom.

Christine Counsell taught in state secondary schools before holding roles as local authority adviser in Gloucestershire, followed by senior leader in a Bristol secondary school and then Senior Lecturer in the University of Cambridge Faculty of Education where she ran the history PGCE course for 19 years.

Dr Harold Hislop is Adjunct Professor in the School of Policy and Practice at Dublin City University’s Institute of Education and Chair of the Governing Board of the Centre for Educational Research and Innovation (CERI) at the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in Paris.  He was Chief Inspector at the Department of Education in Dublin from 2010 to 2022 and worked previously at Ireland’s National Council for Curriculum and Assessment, and as a teacher, school principal and lecturer in education at Trinity College Dublin.

Dr Nina Hood is a New Zealand-based educationalist. She is Academic Director of The Teachers' Institute, a new teacher training organisation.  She is also the Founder of The Education Hub, a not-for-profit organisation with a mission to bridge the gap between research and practice in education.

Tim Oates CBE  is the Director of Assessment Research and Development at Cambridge University Press and Assessment.  He was previously at the Qualifications and Curriculum Agency, where he had been Head of Research and Statistics.  He is a leading expert on curriculum, assessment and leadership and led the 2010 review of the National Curriculum in England.