Maurice Walker

Maurice focuses on the development of large scale / national assessment systems. He has substantial experience in the design, development, management, implementation, analysis and reporting of large scale assessments. Currently he is the Research Director, Assessment Transformation, at the Australian Council for Educational Research.

Maurice is International Project Director for the OECD International Early Learning and Child Well-being Study (IELS). From 2018-2023 he was the project sponsor of ACER’s technical support to the development of South Africa’s systemic evaluation program, which included vertically linked national assessments at grades 3, 6 and 9.

In 2021 he was responsible for developing a National Assessment Framework for the Emirati Schools Establishment (UAE) and in 2017 he led a team developing the National Assessment Framework for Afghanistan. From 2015–2017 he was team leader for a project devising and initiating a strategy for an increasingly comprehensive and coherent national assessment system in Indonesia. A large part of this work involved capacity analysis and development of the national agencies.

From 2014-2016 Maurice managed the technical support to India's NCERT for development of the Class X National Achievement Survey. Prior to this his focus was developing a national learning assessment in Afghanistan (implemented in grade 6 in 2012 and grade 3 in 2016).

Maurice promotes technology based assessment solutions and has wide experience in large scale technology based assessment: in Indonesia, Afghanistan, Lesotho and Australia. IELS is also technology based, and Maurice coordinated the PISA 2012 Computer-Based Assessments, and the Digital Reading Assessment in PISA 2009.

Maurice was involved in the design and implementation of four rounds of PISA, he was project director for PISA 2009+ and was responsible for coordinating major parts of the development of the PISA 2006 contextual instruments and framework.