Director

Dr Caroline Pontefract

Dr Caroline Pontefract has been working in education programme management and implementation since 1990.

She has experience of working within bilateral, multilateral organisations and the United Nations. Prior to becoming Director, Social Transformation Programmes Division, Commonwealth Secretariat she was Chief of Section for Teacher Education, at UNESCO, based in their Headquarters in Paris. 

This included providing the technical lead on the E9 countries Conference of 2008 ‘Improvement of Teacher Education and Training as a Focus of Educational System Reform’. Her Section was also responsible for the strategic design and implementation of the UNESCO EFA high-level Teacher Training in Sub Saharan Africa (TTISSA) ten year initiative, which addresses key areas of policy, quality assurance, research, teacher management and teacher education.

Dr Pontefract has worked for the British Department for International Development (DFID), in Kenya and Ghana, within the Ministries of Education, and alongside a range of stakeholders, to provide support to the development of successful national education programmes. She also spent two years as a Principal Analyst at the Africa Development Bank in the Social Division which focused on financial and technical support to Member States in the areas of health, education, and gender.

Dr Pontefract has a Masters in Education in Development from the University of London, Institute of Education, and a Doctorate in Education, where the focus of her research was discourse analysis in Kenyan classrooms and its implications for student learning outcomes and teacher professional development