Mick Walker

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.