Dr Nick Taylor earned his Doctorate in Mathematics Education and is acknowledged as a leading researcher in the education field in South Africa. Nick taught mathematics and science in Johannesburg high schools for ten years and held the post of Subject Advisor for Mathematics for the Soweto Region of the Department of Education and Training for four years. In 1989, he joined the Education Policy Unit at the University of the Witwatersrand as Policy Researcher and was involved in exploring education policies for a democratic South Africa. In 1993, Nick was appointed Deputy Director of newly established Joint Education Trust and became Executive Director in 1994. He served in this position until 2000 and during this time led several large-scale initiatives including the President’s Education Initiative (1999), a number of large school improvement programmes funded respectively by DFID, DANIDA, USAID and South Africa’s Business Trust and the National School Effectiveness Study (2013). Nick also undertook consultancies for the President’s Office (2008-2009) and was commissioned by the National Planning Commission to produce a source document on improving schooling for the National Development Plan. Between May 2012 and April 2015 Nick was seconded to the Ministry of Basic Education where he established and ran the National Education Evaluation and Development Unit (NEEDU), a national school evaluation unit. He led the Initial Teacher Education Research Project (ITERP), a collaborative project which investigated the quality of pre-service teacher education in order to stimulate improvement in its quality. ITERP led directly to the Primary Teacher Evaluation Project (PrimTEd), a five year programme directed towards developing initial teacher curricula for primary school teachers in training, led by the Department of Higher Education and Training, supported by the European Union and managed by JET. Nick also led the implementation evaluation of South Africa’s national curriculum, commissioned by the Department of Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation situated in the Office of the Presidency.
Nick has also been a visiting researcher at the University of the Witwatersrand and served on statutory bodies such as the National Skills Authority and Umalusi, the South African Quality Council for General and Further Education and Training.
He has authored, co-authored and/or edited a number of publications, including academic journals, journal articles and books and has presented at many conferences, often as the keynote speaker.
