Biography

From 1989 until January 2014, Professor Bill Boyle was Professor of Education, the Chair of Educational Assessment and Director of the Centre for Formative Assessment Studies (CFAS) in the School of Education, University of Manchester (UK).

During his time at Manchester, Professor Boyle was Director of many assessments reform projects nationally and internationally in all phases of education from including primary, secondary and Higher Education. These included the ten year longitudinal assessment project for the UK government’s Qualifications Curriculum Authority (QCA,1997-2008) which collected, analysed and reported on a nationally representative sample of primary and secondary schools’ curriculum and assessment data. He also contributed to the UK government’s parliamentary Select Committee Report on the National Curriculum and its Assessment (2008-9).

Professor Boyle publishes extensively on teaching, learning and assessment; his current book is titled ‘Formative assessment for teaching and learning’ (Boyle & Charles, SAGE 2013). Boyle works with Ministries of Education throughout the world on curriculum and assessment research and development and policy consultancies. These include leading World Bank projects in Russia (HE focus), Armenia (HE focus), Vietnam (HE focus) and Jamaica on teacher development and the development of National Education Assessment systems in Russia and Pakistan at conceptual and item development levels.

He has worked with the Gulf Arab States Education Research Council in developing a curriculum manual for benchmarking standards and presented workshops on Quality Assessment in Higher Education for the NCAAA. He has supported MoE developments in the United Arab Emirates, Oman and Bahrain. He is currently a member of the Expert Council of the World Bank on an innovative Russian Educational Aid and Development project which supplies teaching, learning and assessment educational technical support to a number of developing countries in Africa and Asia.