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 and senior moderator.
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 over 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 QCDA, he was accountable for national curriculum assessments and supporting the delivery of general qualifications. He was an adviser to the Expert Group on Assessment in 2009 and more recently supported the National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT) Commission on Assessment without Levels and was a member of the DfE Independent Teacher Workload Review Group. Mick has acted as an Associate Director of AQA, an Adviser to the Welsh Government, PwC and FrogEducation and chairs the Assessment Committee of the Institute of Directors (IoD). 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.
Mick holds degrees at masters and bachelor levels and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and a Trustee and Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Educational Assessors. He is passionate about education and aligning the aims of a national education and training high volume examination and testing systems with the aims and realities of everyday teaching and learning in schools, colleges and the workplace to benefit society and support each individual to reach their true potential.
