Policy Advisory

I worked with the Education Review Office (ERO) of Nepal’s Ministry of Education and Sports to strengthen the National Assessment of Student Achievement (NASA). I advised on updating the assessment framework, aligning items with content domains and cognitive demands, and using item-level data to inform test development. I also designed and delivered six days of applied training for ERO staff and teachers responsible for reading, mathematics, and science. Working across all three subjects, I helped participants review existing items, develop selected- and constructed-response items, and assemble a new item pool. These items will be field-tested and analyzed before being considered for the 2026 Grade 10 NASA. The work brought together parts of my career that are often treated separately, including classroom teaching, educational measurement, and system-level policy. It also reinforced a central lesson from my work with education systems: a national assessment becomes institutionally useful when technical quality is matched by the capacity to manage each stage, from framework development and item writing to field testing, analysis, and evidence use. 

In 2026, my work with GEEDLab shifted from developing Ghana’s first Research and Learning Agenda to institutionalizing it as a sustained Ministry function. I am supporting the Ministry of Education to establish the roles, protocols, and staff capacity needed to refresh research priorities, commission and oversee studies, organize knowledge products, and connect evidence with policy and implementation. This includes clarifying decision points, creating mechanisms for continued consultation, and making research and guidance accessible to Ministry teams. The work reflects a central lesson of institutional reform: a research agenda becomes useful not when it is completed, but when the routines and capabilities needed to act on it become part of how the Ministry operates. 

In 2025, I led the development of Ghana’s first Research and Learning Agenda (RLA) for the Ghana Education Evidence and Data Lab (GEEDLab). Through a week-long stakeholder process, I worked with government, universities, research institutions, and development partners to identify where rigorous evidence was most needed and align those priorities with Ghana’s National Education Strategic Plan. The process required moving from a long list of competing evidence needs to a focused set of research priorities that could inform real policy choices. By structuring that process, I helped translate system demand into a national research agenda and create a clearer basis for coordinating future evidence generation and use.