Dr Ursula Schwantner

Mag. Phil (EdSci), Dr. Phil (EdSci) Paris-Lodron University of Salzburg

Dr Ursula Schwantner is a Principal Research Fellow in the Assessment Transformation research program at the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER). As head of the Global Education Monitoring (GEM) Centre, Ursula leads ACER’s partnership with the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS), for developing methods and tools for countries to use their national or regional learning assessment to report progress towards achieving United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 4 in education. Ursula is the Project Director for the Assessment for Minimum Proficiency Levels (AMPL), an initiative of the UIS, undertaken with ACER as the technical partner, to measure the proportion of students meeting global minimum proficiency levels in participating countries. Specialising in large-scale assessment methods, Ursula has a focus on capacity development and supporting countries in developing and implementing high-quality, robust assessment programs that are embedded into enabling assessment systems. Ursula also leads the GEM Centre’s partnership with the People’s Action for Learning (PAL) Network which joins citizen-led assessments in fourteen countries across the Global South. Prior to joining ACER in 2014, Ursula was the National Project Manager for OECD/PISA in Austria, and has conducted research on PISA, IEA/PIRLS and TIMSS.